Asha Rijal^1,, Chandrakala Sharma², Dr. Ram Thapa³

Violence against women is one of the growing public health issues. Domestic violence (DV) is an aggressive behavior against female partner in any family. Globally, many couples suffer from infertility. It is associated with emotional problems, marital distress and domestic violence. Therefore, the main purpose of this study is to accumulate and analyze the experience of domestic violence among infertile women. The study has selected a descriptive cross-sectional research design with a purposive sampling technique to select 144 infertile women from Om hospital & Research Centre Private Limited in located Kathmandu district of Nepal. Data has been collected over one month 8^th September to 4^th October 2019. In-order to collect the primary data the study has used structured questionnaire; Infertile Women Exposure to Violence Determination Scale (IWEVDS). The study used descriptive and inferential statistical tests for the analysis of the collected data. The study found psychological violence (97.2%) as the most common type of reported violence against infertile women followed by sexual (12.5%) and physical (9.7%). The top three domains with highest mean score were exposure to social pressure, traditional practice and domestic violence respectively. Similarly, the study noticed that duration of marriage and treatment are associated with three different sub-dimensions of IWEVDS score. Based on the findings, the study concluded that the infertile women mostly experienced psychological violence. It could be cultural influences on gender violence in our society. There is need of counseling sessions for the infertile women attending the clinics and the health workers and the awareness program about women’s violence should be conducted to prevent further mental health problems.

domestic-violence, infertility, IWEVDS, Nepal