TY - JOUR
T1 - Women’s Employment and Intimate Partner Violence
T2 - Understanding the Role of Individual and Community Structural Drivers in Low- and Middle-Income Countries
AU - Bourey, Christine
AU - Bass, Judith
AU - Stephenson, Rob
N1 - Funding Information:
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research and/or authorship of this article: Christine Bourey was supported by training grant T32MH103210 from the National Institute of Mental Health.
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2022.
PY - 2023/5
Y1 - 2023/5
N2 - Empirical findings on the relationship between women’s employment and intimate partner violence (IPV) in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are mixed. These varied findings may arise because research thus far has given insufficient attention to how individual attributes and community context shape the pathways between women’s employment and IPV. Using publicly available Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) data from 20 LMIC settings (n = 168,995), we investigate (1) how women’s employment is associated with past-year IPV and (2) if associations differ by household- or community-level structural drivers of IPV: women’s attitudes toward IPV, women’s participation in household decision-making, and relative wealth. We fit mixed-effects logistic regression models exploring the total, individual, community, and contextual effects of women’s employment on past-year IPV; effect measure modification by structural drivers; and cross-level interactions between community-level structural drivers and individual employment. Our analyses reveal positive associations between total (odds ratio [OR] = 1.31; 95% CI [1.27, 1.35]), individual (OR = 1.23; 95% CI [1.19, 1.27]), community (OR = 1.06; 95% CI [1.06, 1.07]), and contextual effects (OR = 1.04; 95% CI [1.03, 1.05]) of women’s employment for IPV. Only individual wealth demonstrated statistically significant effect measure modification for the relationship between individual employment and past-year IPV (ratio of OR = 0.95; 95% CI [0.92, 0.99]). These findings suggest interventions that focus only on increasing women’s employment may be associated with harmful increases in the occurrence of IPV, even when these interventions enable a large proportion of women in a community to be employed. Structural interventions that change norms of women’s autonomy or attitudes toward IPV at the household or community levels may be insufficient to ameliorate these negative effects, whereas interventions that increase household wealth partly may buffer these effects.
AB - Empirical findings on the relationship between women’s employment and intimate partner violence (IPV) in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are mixed. These varied findings may arise because research thus far has given insufficient attention to how individual attributes and community context shape the pathways between women’s employment and IPV. Using publicly available Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) data from 20 LMIC settings (n = 168,995), we investigate (1) how women’s employment is associated with past-year IPV and (2) if associations differ by household- or community-level structural drivers of IPV: women’s attitudes toward IPV, women’s participation in household decision-making, and relative wealth. We fit mixed-effects logistic regression models exploring the total, individual, community, and contextual effects of women’s employment on past-year IPV; effect measure modification by structural drivers; and cross-level interactions between community-level structural drivers and individual employment. Our analyses reveal positive associations between total (odds ratio [OR] = 1.31; 95% CI [1.27, 1.35]), individual (OR = 1.23; 95% CI [1.19, 1.27]), community (OR = 1.06; 95% CI [1.06, 1.07]), and contextual effects (OR = 1.04; 95% CI [1.03, 1.05]) of women’s employment for IPV. Only individual wealth demonstrated statistically significant effect measure modification for the relationship between individual employment and past-year IPV (ratio of OR = 0.95; 95% CI [0.92, 0.99]). These findings suggest interventions that focus only on increasing women’s employment may be associated with harmful increases in the occurrence of IPV, even when these interventions enable a large proportion of women in a community to be employed. Structural interventions that change norms of women’s autonomy or attitudes toward IPV at the household or community levels may be insufficient to ameliorate these negative effects, whereas interventions that increase household wealth partly may buffer these effects.
KW - employment
KW - gender inequity
KW - intimate partner violence (IPV)
KW - low-and middle-income countries (LMIC)
KW - multilevel modeling
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85142155179&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85142155179&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/08862605221134086
DO - 10.1177/08862605221134086
M3 - Article
C2 - 36373609
AN - SCOPUS:85142155179
SN - 0886-2605
VL - 38
SP - 6480
EP - 6499
JO - Journal of Interpersonal Violence
JF - Journal of Interpersonal Violence
IS - 9-10
ER -