Physical and sexual violence in time of covid-19 pademic in women who experienced family violence in Hanoi in 2020

Abstract

Objective: To describe the current situation of physical and sexual violence during the time of COVID-19 pandemic‘s wave one among women who experienced domestic violence in Hanoi as well as its consequence and coping strategies of those women.

Methods: A cross-sectional study with combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches was used. 303 women who ever experienced domestic violence participated in quantitative study and 15 women participated in in-depth interviews in qualitative study.

Results: During COVID-19 pandemic, 63,04% of women who were ever experienced domestic violence were physical and sexual violence, of which, the proportion of women who were sexual violence was 25,08% and the proportion of women who were physical violence was 58,75%. 37,89% of women, who experienced physical and sexual violence, were led to be injured and need to have medical treatment. Facing with physical and sexual violence, majority of those women chose to keep silent, some of them ran away to other places or have negative thoughts and actions such as suicide.

Conclusion: COVID-19 pandemic made worse the situation of women being physical and sexual violent, which can be reflected through the frequency of women being physical and sexual violence five times were all higher than 51% during outbreak of COVID -19 pandemic