Background: Attitudes toward intimate partner violence (IPV) is one of the factors affecting IPV victimization and perpetration. Evidences from Demographic and Health surveys in various countries and in Ethiopia too showed that more women are generally believed to justify IPV than men do. However, the factors affecting women’s justification of IPV are not well documented and investigating those factors   may provide information necessary for holistic interventions.

Objectives: The study aimed to assess women’s attitude (justification of physical intimate partner violence) and factors associated with it among currently married urban women living in Arba Minch town, South Ethiopia.

Methods: A community-based cross-sectional study was conducted among 696 currently married women of childbearing age (15-49). Multistage cluster sampling was used to select the study subjects from 11 kebeles of the town. A quantitative data was collected using a pre-tested and structured questionnaire on randomly selected women. Women were asked whether they justify if their husband beats them in five conditions(goes out without telling him, neglects the children, argues with him, refuses to have sex with him, burns the food) as ‘Yes‘ or ‘No’ questions. Those who responded affirmatively to at least one of the questions(‘Yes’) were considered as having attitude that justify wife beating or not otherwise.  Logistic regression was done using IBM SPSS version 20. Odds ratio with its 95% confidence interval was used to show the degree of association between the outcome variable and explanatory variables. Level of statistical significance was set at p-value of less than 0.05.

Result: Nearly two-third (59.5%) of the study women justified wife beating in at least one of the five conditions. A significant relationship was observed between women’s justification on wife beating and their intimate partner physical violence experience 12 months before the survey period(Chi-square p-value<0.01). One hundred seventy nine (71%%) of those women who justified wife beating experienced it in the 12 months before the survey period as compared to 73(29%) who had negative attitude(did not justify wife beating). A higher odds of justification of  wife beating was observed among women whose marriage was arranged by any other person than the couples themselves (AOR=1.87(1.08,3.23) ), from food  insecure households (AOR=2.76(1.98,3.85)), with  family size of 5 and above(AOR=1.66(1.06,2.59)), in the age group of 30-39 (AOR=2.03(1.14,3.59)),and  partner’s age of 31-39 (AOR=1.93(1.08,3.41)).

Conclusion and recommendation: Despite great efforts in realizing gender equality in the country, a higher proportion of women were having attitude that justify wife beating in cases of the five conditions specified to them. In line with their reports, a significant proportion of women experienced physical violence in the 12 months before the survey period. Interventions targeting on the improvement of women’s attitude towards wife beating should take into consideration the traditional norms of arranging marriage and women’s household food conditions and family size.