Violence and Its Related Factors in Infertile Women Attending Infertility Centers: A Cross-Sectional Study

Infertility, as a crisis in marital life, has multiple psychological and social consequences for couples, especially women. Infertile women are more vulnerable to violence than fertile women. The purpose of this study was to examine violence and its related factors in infertile women referring to infertility centers of Rasht, Iran.

This cross-sectional study was conducted on 245 women with primary infertility who referred to infertility canters in Rasht, Iran in 2017, using sequential sampling method. The data collection tool was a self-structured questionnaire to examine the demographic characteristics of the couples and Onat's violence standard questionnaire for assessing the exposure of infertile women to violence. The data were analyzed using Kolmogorov-Smirnov, Friedman, Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis tests as well as Spearman correlation and logistic regression.

The results showed that the mean total score of violence was 50.93 ± 18.76. Also, there were significant relationships between the total score of violence and the variables of the duration of marriage, the duration of awareness and treatment of infertility, the age of married couples, occupation/education of the  couples, the family relationship between couples, unwillingly marriage and the number of infertility treatment attempts (P<0.05).

Infertility is not merely a biomedical disorder and can lead to violence against women, therefore providing counselling services to infertile couples, making them aware of infertility treatments, improving the socio -economic status of women as well as teaching the way of managing marital, cultural and family issues to couples can be effective in reducing violence against infertile women.