Association between alcohol use and femicide in South Africa during the COVID-19 pandemic: a cross-sectional study
Abstract
BACKGROUND
Alcohol use has previously been associated with femicide, the most extreme form of gender-based violence, but research on femicide from low-income and middle-income countries is scarce. We aimed to examine the role of alcohol restrictions during South Africa's COVID-19 lockdowns on femicide rates in the country.
METHODS
In this cross-sectional study, we compared estimates of overall femicide, intimate partner femicide, and non-intimate partner femicide from two retrospective national surveys of female individuals aged 14 years and older killed in 2017 and during nine COVID-19 lockdown periods in 2020-21. Both surveys used multistage, stratified cluster sampling with mortuaries or medico-legal laboratories as the primary sampling unit. Sampling frames that listed all mortuaries operating in the country in each study year were developed and mortuaries were stratified by size on the basis of the number of autopsies they performed per year. Mortuary data were supplemented with investigative data extracted from police dockets during interviews with police members. Cases in which age and sex were unknown and in which the cause of death was undetermined were excluded from data collection. Linearisation was used to obtain robust variance estimators for parameter estimates. Female population estimates were derived from the Thembisa mathematical model to calculate age-standardised rates, and the WHO world standard population distribution was used to normalise weightings for…
How strong is the evidence?
Evidence Hub reads this as a cross-sectional, done in people. Its evidence level is 4 of 5 (Low · observational). Observational designs can show an association but not prove cause.
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