HIV misconceptions among married women in Malawi: the role of household decision-making autonomy

Married women face one of the highest HIV rates in Malawi. Although HIV misconceptions have been identified as a major contributor to HIV infection, we know very little about the association between household decision-making autonomy and HIV misconception endorsement among married women in Malawi.

We used the 2015/2016 Malawi Demographic and Health Survey and applied a logistics regression technique to examine the association between household decision-making autonomy and HIV misconception endorsement among married women.

The findings reveal that married women with higher levels of autonomy are less likely to endorse HIV misconceptions than those with lower levels (OR = 0.907, p < 0.001) although this difference is partly attenuated when we control for socioeconomic status such as education, household wealth, and employment (OR = 0.957, p < 0.05). We further introduce an interaction term, which points out that the impact of autonomy on misconception endorsement is significantly higher for married women in the central region than for those in the northern region (OR = 1.14, p < 0.01).

Based on these findings, we provide several implications for policymakers and future research.