Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2020 May 29;20(1):13.
doi: 10.1186/s12914-020-00233-z.

Development and validation of the LoVI: the Laws on Violence against women and girls Index

Kathryn M Yount  1   2 , Patricia C Lewis  3 , Cari Jo Clark  4 , Lori Heise  5 , Ruchira T Naved  6 , Lauren Maxwell  4
Affiliations

Development and validation of the LoVI: the Laws on Violence against women and girls Index

Kathryn M Yount et al. BMC Int Health Hum Rights. .

Abstract

Background: Violence against women and girls (VAWG) is a human-rights violation with adverse long-term and inter-generational consequences. Redefining VAWG as legally unacceptable is one strategy for social change. The co-occurrence of national laws against VAWG is understudied, and tools to monitor the national legal environment are lacking. We developed the Laws on Violence against Women and Girls Index (LoVI) to measure global progress to develop comprehensive national legislation against child marriage, sexual harassment, domestic violence, and marital rape.

Methods: Using data from 2016 and 2018 for 189 countries from the World Bank Women, Business, and the Law database, we used factor analysis to assess the dimensionality of the LoVI. We examined the distribution of the LoVI across countries and regions, and the relationship of national rankings on the LoVI with those for other indicators from the United Nations, Demographic and Health Surveys, and World Factbook.

Results: A single LoVI factor showed good model fit in the factor analysis. National LoVI rankings were positively associated with gender equality in human development and economic rights-related rankings and negatively associated with rates of justifying wife beating and of lifetime and prior-year physical and/or sexual IPV. The LoVI was not associated with national indicators for human development and income inequality.

Conclusion: The LoVI is a concise, coherent, validated index to monitor the progress of nations on adopting comprehensive legislation to advance 2030 Sustainable Development Goal 5, to eliminate VAWG.

Keywords: Factor analysis; Gender equality; Index validation; National Legislation; Sustainable development goals; Violence against women and girls (VAWG).

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Country rankings by LoVI quintile. Notes. To create the choropleth map of LoVI quintiles, the authors used ArcMap version 10.5.1 (Esri, Redlands California) and the shapefile downloaded from www.naturalearth.com on 8 June 2018. This figure is original, and the author team produced it as part of the analysis for this publication
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Scatterplots and LOWESS curves comparing national rankings on the LoVI with national rankings on other indicators. Notes. HDI Human Development Index; GDI Gender-related Development Index; VPPI Violence Against Women and Girls Prevention Program Index; VRPI Violence against Women and Girls Response Program Index; LoWEE Laws on Women’s Economic Equality index
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Bland-Altman plots comparing national rankings on the LoVI with national rankings on related indicators. Notes. HDI Human Development Index; GDI Gender-related Development Index; VPPI Violence against Women and Girls Prevention Program Index; VRPI Violence against Women and Girls Response Program Index; LoWEE Laws on Women’s Economic Equality index
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

References

    1. United Nations. 48/104. Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women: United Nations; 1993. https://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/violenceagainstwomen....
    1. Clark CJ, Alonso A, Everson-Rose SA, Spencer RA, Brady SS, Resnick MD, et al. Intimate partner violence in late adolescence and young adulthood and subsequent cardiovascular risk in adulthood. Prev Med. 2016;87:132–137. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Sigal JA, Perrino CS, Denmark FL, Dow EAA, Strashnaya R, Zarbiv T, et al. Violence against Girls. In: Gielen UP, Roopnarine JL, et al., editors. Childhood and Adolescence: Cross-Cultural Perspectives and Applications: ABC-CLIO. 2016. pp. 379–404.
    1. Solotaroff JL, Pande RP. Violence against women and girls: lessons from South Asia. South Asia development forum. Washington, DC: World Bank; 2014.
    1. Yount KM, Abraham BK. Female genital cutting and HIV/AIDS among Kenyan women. Stud Fam Plan. 2007;38(2):73–88. - PubMed

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources