At the vanguard: Women’s economic empowerment and the risk for intimate partner violence

In regions around the world, intimate partner violence presents a persistent global health challenge. Studies show that 27% of ever-partnered women experience physical and/or sexual IPV in their lifetime — with 13% experiencing it in the past year, notes Johns Hopkins Carey Business School Associate Professor of Management and Organization Colleen Stuart.

Providing women with opportunities for economic empowerment is often seen as a path to decreasing intimate partner violence. By providing financial stability, families can reduce conflict giving women more financial independence to leave harmful relationships, and equipping women with stronger social networks and enhanced self-efficacy to better navigate unsafe situations.

“However, theory also suggests women’s economic empowerment can increase intimate partner violence due to male backlash,” says Stuart, noting that some men may feel that their role as the family’s breadwinner is being threatened.

Anaise Williams, assistant scientist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Global Women’s Health and Gender Equity, dedicated her dissertation to understanding where, when, and to whom such backlash occurs. Her research involved analyzing a cross-sectional study of currently partnered women in 44 low- and middle-income countries.

“We found that women who were working at the ‘vanguard’ in their communities — earning income and working in places outside the local norm — were potentially more at risk for violence from their partners,” says Williams. Her dissertation research served as the basis for a study published in Global Health Research and Policy, coauthored with Stuart, Michelle Decker, Lori Heise (Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health), and Nancy Perrin (Johns Hopkins School of Nursing).

Poorer economically empowered women most at risk

While existing evidence has largely focused on the individual level, notes Stuart, less attention has been given to the role of local context on women’s economic participation. To gain a fuller picture, Williams drew on demographic and health surveys from dozens of countries, zeroing in on women who had participated in a domestic violence module.

The study relies on eight proxies of economic empowerment used in the literature. These included such variables as whether a woman had worked or not in the past year, earned less or more than her husband, had a primary education, or participated in decisions on how to spend her husband’s — or her own — earnings. Williams developed a “vanguard” economic empowerment index, which captured the number of items (out of the eight) for which a woman was at the vanguard, or outside the local norm. Perhaps she had a primary education and worked in a managerial position, for example, in a community where few women had attended school or worked outside the home.

“Our findings indicate that while overall women’s economic empowerment was negatively associated with violence, being a ‘vanguard’ is positively associated with violence,” notes Williams.

In addition, says Stuart, “one really important finding of our study is that women who are at the greatest risk for intimate partner violence live in the poorest areas, where their economic independence was outside the norm.” It’s likely that these women’s economic empowerment stands in stark contrast to their husbands’ lack of economic success, she says. The researchers’ findings suggest that non-normative economic behavior may be less risky for women in wealthier homes, they say.

Targeting resources for intimate partner violence

Williams is quick to underscore that the message for program and policy leaders is not to avoid economic empowerment programs for women in poorer areas of the world.

“Instead, we’re suggesting that when economic empowerment programs are introduced in contexts where women’s economic participation is not the norm, there must be mechanisms in place to measure and monitor intimate partner violence. And there needs to be resources and support for women who experience such violence,” she says.

“Of course, implementing such safeguards costs money,” notes Stuart. “So, it’s important to understand the conditions under which women are most at risk so that programming can be implemented in a thoughtful and targeted way. The findings of this study do that, offering specific guidance to mitigate potential harm.”