Abstracts Womens Studies

UNDERSTANDING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN INTIMATE PARTNER VIOLENCE AND GOING AGAINST THE NORM IN LOW- AND MIDDLE-INCOME COUNTRIES: WHAT ARE THE IMPLICATIONS OF BEING ON THE VANGUARD OF WOMEN'S ECONOMIC PARTICIPATION?

by Anaise Marie https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4617-9267 Williams

Background: Women’s economic empowerment (WEE) is postulated to reduce intimate partner violence (IPV), yet the results are mixed across low- and middle- income countries (LMICs). Few studies have explored how broader layers of the social ecology inform WEE-IPV relationships at the individual-level. This dissertation 1) constructs an index capturing the extent to which a woman is going against the community norm on women's economic participation, the “vanguard WEE" index, 2) examines associations of the vanguard WEE index with IPV, and 3) tests moderation of the vanguard WEE and IPV relationship by the Women, Business and Law Index (WBL), a validated national-level index capturing WEE-promoting legislation. Methods: Dissertation analyses were secondary analyses of cross-sectional data from the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS). The analytic sample for constructing the vanguard WEE index was 440,836 women across 49 LMICs. The analytic sample for IPV analysis was a sub-sample of 189,414 partnered women across 44 LMICs. Multilevel mixed effects models with both random intercepts and random slopes were used to achieve study aims. Results: The vanguard WEE index (mean: 1.1, SD: 1.2) was a count of women’s individual WEE items, while living in a community with item prevalence <35% or =>35% and <=65% and in the bottom two-thirds of the community-level distribution within the region. The index was validated through association with increased gender financial discrimination (p<0.001). As compared to women with no vanguard WEE items, women with at least one vanguard WEE item had increased probability of past-year physical IPV (marginal effect 0.01; 95% CI: 0.01, 0.02), past-year sexual IPV (marginal effect 0.01; 95% CI: 0.01, 0.01), and current partner control (marginal effect 0.02; 95% CI: 0.01, 0.03). The WBL index interacted significantly with vanguard WEE on past-year physical IPV (B 0.05, 95% CI 0.02, 0.08), but not on past-year sexual IPV or current partner control. Conclusions: Dissertation results provide evidence of increased IPV among women going against the economic norm. Given the risk of potential backlash against economic gain, especially where WEE is not normative, WEE operations should incorporate rigorous and locally informed safeguarding systems to monitor and mitigate harmful spousal backlash.