Effect of education on the risk of gender-based violence in the Philippines

Abstract

Background: Gender-based violence originates when societal gender-based expectations and the reality are not consistent. One such example is: there has been a recent rise in women's education in the Philippines, yet the prevalence of traditional female role expectations in the context of the heavily Catholic Filipino society remains unchanged.

Objectives: In this paper, the relationship between women's education and their risk of gender-based violence (GBV) is examined and compared with the relationship between the education of their partners and the women's risk of experiencing GBV.

Methodology: Our sample included women living in the Philippines surveyed by the Demographic Health Survey in 2017. We used multivariate logistic regression on the respondents' and the partner's education level, with respondent's risk of experiencing GBV.

Results: We found that there was a slight but statistically significant decreased risk of GBV experience with increased years of education of both the female respondents and their male partners. For all female respondents, there was a 3.7% decrease in the risk of GBV per additional year of their own education. For those with partners, there was a 2.3% decrease in the risk of GBV per additional year of their partner's education.

Conclusion: We found that the education of male partners is as much of a factor as the women's own education in her likelihood of experiencing violence. From this, we established that partner selection based on their education levels may act as a protective factor for an individual's likelihood of experiencing GBV. Policy initiatives should address increasing male awareness of safe behavior and violence against women, especially while traditional gender roles are still predominant in the Filipino society.