Social science & medicine
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Social science & medicine · Apr 2002
"Women enjoy punishment": attitudes and experiences of gender-based violence among PHC nurses in rural South Africa.
Violence against women is pervasive in South Africa where, as in many other countries, cultural values and norms serve to condone and reinforce abusive practices against women. Primary health care nurses, who are widely distributed throughout the rural areas, may appear to be an ideal network for addressing this issue in resource-poor settings. However, based on a qualitative and quantitative study of a class of 38 PHC nurses, this paper emphasises that the nurses are women and men first--and as such, experience the same cultural values, and indeed, similar or higher levels of violence, as the clients they are expected to counsel and treat. ⋯ Only then did the intervention turn to their roles as professional nurses. Clearly, there is a need for further research to explore these issues in more depth and to inform the development of appropriate training strategies for health care workers, particularly in developing countries. Moreover, such research may well have implications for the design and implementation of training interventions aimed at raising awareness and capacity within other sectors such as the welfare, police and judicial systems.