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Gender Inequality in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: Associations with Parental Physical Abuse and Moderation by Child Gender

Gender inequality perpetuates women’s economic insecurity and a culture of violence. Parental distress caused by economic pressure may increase violence against children. High levels of gender inequality and interpersonal violence may contribute to higher levels of physical abuse. Using an ecologica...

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Autores principales: Ma, Julie, Grogan-Kaylor, Andrew C., Lee, Shawna J., Ward, Kaitlin P., Pace, Garrett T.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9565581/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36231226
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph191911928
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author Ma, Julie
Grogan-Kaylor, Andrew C.
Lee, Shawna J.
Ward, Kaitlin P.
Pace, Garrett T.
author_facet Ma, Julie
Grogan-Kaylor, Andrew C.
Lee, Shawna J.
Ward, Kaitlin P.
Pace, Garrett T.
author_sort Ma, Julie
collection PubMed
description Gender inequality perpetuates women’s economic insecurity and a culture of violence. Parental distress caused by economic pressure may increase violence against children. High levels of gender inequality and interpersonal violence may contribute to higher levels of physical abuse. Using an ecological perspective, this study examines the association of country-level gender inequality and household-level parental physical abuse, and the moderating role of child gender in this association in low- and middle-income countries. We used data on over 420,000 households from the UNICEF Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys and country-level indicators from the United Nations Development Program Human Development data. We employed multilevel logistic regression to examine the association between gender inequality with the log-odds of physical abuse after accounting for country- and individual-level covariates. In order to more fully explore our results, we calculated predicted probabilities of abuse for several scenarios. The results indicated that higher levels of gender inequality were associated with higher probabilities of physical abuse. This association was stronger for female children than for male children. The probabilities of abuse by child gender were indistinguishable, although rates of physical abuse converged as gender inequality increased, at a statistically marginal level. These findings indicate that macro-level interventions that reduce gender inequality are necessary to prevent and reduce child physical abuse.
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spelling pubmed-95655812022-10-15 Gender Inequality in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: Associations with Parental Physical Abuse and Moderation by Child Gender Ma, Julie Grogan-Kaylor, Andrew C. Lee, Shawna J. Ward, Kaitlin P. Pace, Garrett T. Int J Environ Res Public Health Article Gender inequality perpetuates women’s economic insecurity and a culture of violence. Parental distress caused by economic pressure may increase violence against children. High levels of gender inequality and interpersonal violence may contribute to higher levels of physical abuse. Using an ecological perspective, this study examines the association of country-level gender inequality and household-level parental physical abuse, and the moderating role of child gender in this association in low- and middle-income countries. We used data on over 420,000 households from the UNICEF Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys and country-level indicators from the United Nations Development Program Human Development data. We employed multilevel logistic regression to examine the association between gender inequality with the log-odds of physical abuse after accounting for country- and individual-level covariates. In order to more fully explore our results, we calculated predicted probabilities of abuse for several scenarios. The results indicated that higher levels of gender inequality were associated with higher probabilities of physical abuse. This association was stronger for female children than for male children. The probabilities of abuse by child gender were indistinguishable, although rates of physical abuse converged as gender inequality increased, at a statistically marginal level. These findings indicate that macro-level interventions that reduce gender inequality are necessary to prevent and reduce child physical abuse. MDPI 2022-09-21 /pmc/articles/PMC9565581/ /pubmed/36231226 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph191911928 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Ma, Julie
Grogan-Kaylor, Andrew C.
Lee, Shawna J.
Ward, Kaitlin P.
Pace, Garrett T.
Gender Inequality in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: Associations with Parental Physical Abuse and Moderation by Child Gender
title Gender Inequality in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: Associations with Parental Physical Abuse and Moderation by Child Gender
title_full Gender Inequality in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: Associations with Parental Physical Abuse and Moderation by Child Gender
title_fullStr Gender Inequality in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: Associations with Parental Physical Abuse and Moderation by Child Gender
title_full_unstemmed Gender Inequality in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: Associations with Parental Physical Abuse and Moderation by Child Gender
title_short Gender Inequality in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: Associations with Parental Physical Abuse and Moderation by Child Gender
title_sort gender inequality in low- and middle-income countries: associations with parental physical abuse and moderation by child gender
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9565581/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36231226
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph191911928
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