A systematic review: Empowerment interventions to reduce domestic violence?

Abstract Background The World Health Organization defines domestic violence against women as a major health problem. Domestic violence is a consequence of a lack of power, empowerment, and gender equality in societies. In recent years, researchers have proposed various interventional approaches involving empowerment to reduce domestic violence against women. This systematic review investigated the impact of interventional approaches on preventing domestic violence against women through empowerment. Methods This review study involved searches of English databases, such as the Web of Science, Scopus, Embase, MEDLINE (via PubMed), and the Cochrane Library, and Iranian databases, such as Scientific Information Database, Magiran, and Irandoc, as well the use of Google Scholar to find relevant articles published from 2000 to 2020 (Retrieval date: July 1, 2020). We used the following keywords: family violence, violence, domestic violence, intimate partner violence, physical abuse, spouse abuse, elder abuse, child abuse, power, empowerment, personal power, professional power, and decision-making. The inclusion criteria were that the target group in the interventional studies was women and girls who experienced domestic violence; the interventional approaches used empowerment to prevent domestic violence; and the full text of the articles was accessible and available in English or Persian. Our electronic search revealed 121,925 relevant papers of which 11 studies were included in the review. Results We categorized the studies according to the risk factors for domestic violence against women and the interventions that were adopted. The interventions were applied at the individual, communication, and community levels. Most interventions were performed at several levels. Conclusion Our review showed that the studies mainly focused on interventions that reduced rather than prevented domestic violence. The reviewed studies used various strategies in different societies, which made it difficult to perform exact comparisons. However, our review indicated that using economic interventions with communication-based and community-based interventions are effective in reducing the risk of domestic violence. We recommend further research be done with respect to the cultural context in each country.