Correlates of Sexual and Physical Violence among Female Preparatory School students in Gurage Zone, Ethiopia

Background and Objective: Gender based violence (sexual and /physical), frequently occurs in institutions assumed to be ‘safe’, such as schools, where perpetrators include peers and teachers. School-related gender-based violence includes but is not limited to rape, unwanted sexual touching, unwanted sexual comments, corporal punishment, bullying and verbal harassment that is based on gender stereotypes which targets female students on the basis of their sex. It is a widespread barrier to girls’ attaining educational equity, which also brings with it many health risks. This study aimed the correlates of sexual and physical violence among female preparatory students in Garage zone, Ethiopia.
Materials and Methods: Institution based cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted in preparatory schools of Gurage zone on March 2017. A multi-stage stratified sampling with simple random sampling technique was applied to select the study participant. Data were collected using a pre-tested structured selfadministered questionnaire. The collected data was cleaned and entered in to Epidata3.1 then exported to SPSS version 20:00 for analysis. Finally, a multivariate logistic regression model was created predict the correlates of sexual and physical violence among female students.
Result: A total of 686 female preparatory students participated in the study, giving a response rate of 90.3 %. The finding showed that the prevalence of sexual and physical violence were 15.9% and 47.5% respectively. Forceful/ unwilling sex accounts 42(38.5%) from sexually active female students. Age group (i.e. Age<18
years); [AOR 1.72, 95 % CI=1.02, 2.84] and monthly received pocket money [AOR 1.37, 95 % CI=1.06, 2.78] were statistically significant predictors of sexual violence. Whereas, substance uses (i.e. Khat chewing, drinking alcohol and cigarette smoking) were statistically significant determinants of sexual and physical violence among female students.
Conclusion: The study has shown that the prevalence of both sexual and physical violence among female students is found to be relatively higher. Thus, designing specific strategic activates towards early detection, identification and prevention of school related gender based violence through provision of different regular information and communication and empowerment of female students is implicated.