Globally, intimate partner violence is experienced in various cultures and affects people across societies irrespective of their economic status. This is also the case in Sub- Saharan Africa. Kenya is reported to show an increasing trend as reported by Medical and Human Rights groups. The influence of intimate partner violence on women's productive work in the informal sector is a subject of interest since women play an active role in the sector. The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of intimate partner violence (IPV) on women's productive work in the informal sector in Nakuru Municipality. The study was carried out in five rescue institutions handling intimate partner violence victims. The study employed ex-post facto research design while simple random sampling was used to select 176 participants who were victims of intimate partner violence and had registered the violence in the five rescue institutions. Data was collected by use of researcher administered questionnaire and focus group discussions. A pre-test was conducted among 25 randomly selected women in Lanet Deanery Centre to determine the instrument's reliability which was found through Cronbachs alpha to be 0.8. Data was analyzed using descriptive statistics for qualitative data while inferential statistics based on Chi square test and T-test were used to analyze quantitative data. The findings of the study showed that IPV significantly (p < 05) resulted into loss of hours of productive work, and reduced personal earnings. The findings therefore indicate that IPV has an influence on productive work of women. It has been recommended that policy makers and stakeholders should include measures to reduce IPV. The same should also be considered for further research so that feasible coping mechanisms can be developed.
Different forms of Intimate Partner violence are experienced in various cultures and affect people across societies irrespective of their economic status. Similar experiences have also been reported in Kenya as shown by the results of this study whose focus was to determine the forms of Intimate Partner violence among women in the informal sector in Nakuru Municipality, Kenya. The study employed ex-post facto research design to undertake inquiry into the occurrence of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) while simple random sampling was used to select 176 participants who were victims of intimate partner violence and had registered the violence in the five rescue institutions. The researcher administered questionnaire and focus group discussions were used to collect data. The study found out that women experience different forms of IPV which included physical, economic, sexual and verbal. Each of these forms of IPV was further investigated using descriptive statistics and the findings revealed that about 62% of physical cases of violence were due to slapping while in economic violence monitoring expenditure was most common at 52.3%. Regarding sexual violence and verbal violence the study revealed that 61.4% of women experienced forced sexual violence and 58.5% experienced name calling respectively. The findings revealed the most common cases of IPV in each form of violence which should therefore constitute areas of intervention in undertaking measures to reduce its occurrence.