Background & objectives: Domestic violence is a major cause of serious threat to the health and rights of women in the world. The modifiable risk factors in low and middle income countries are less well known. The present study was undertaken to determine the predisposing factors of domestic violence against women by identifying at risk women and taking steps to reduce violence.

Methods:�A descriptive and comparative design was used to conduct the study. The study sample consisted of 110 women (n=55 per group) referring to health centers and family courts in Rasht, Iran from 27 July to 10 January, 2013 that selected by convenience sampling method. Study tool retrieved from World Health Organization questionnaire includes the areas of domestic violence, physical violence, psychological and sexual abuse by a 34 questions which uses Likert scoring to rate the level of experienced violence. Through SPSS v.18, descriptive statistics, Man-witney, chi square and t-test were used to analyze the data.

Results:�The results showed a significant relationship between husband's job (p<0.04), housing conditions (p<0.03) and husband's education (p<0.02) with violence on women, as unemployment and low rental housing and education in the abused group was significantly higher than the group without violence.

Conclusion: Because factors such as unemployment, low education levels and lack of housing can rise the prevalence of domestic violence among women, the need to train women to identify factors contributing to domestic violence against women in the family and dating their familiarity with the strategies and methods to reduce violence and seek help from support centers more than ever felt.