How does empowering men affect intimate partner violence? Evidence from Bangladesh

Abstract

This paper investigates the relationship between women's and men's empowerment and intimate partner violence (IPV). To do so, it uses a sample of 4548 households with a husband and a wife who are present in two or three rounds of the Bangladesh Integrated Household Survey (BIHS). Measures of empowerment are constructed separately and symmetrically for husbands and wives. Conditional fixed-effects logistic regressions are employed to examine the statistical association between measures of empowerment and intimate partner violence. Findings indicate that IPV is widespread in rural Bangladesh, as 67.6% and 22.4% of households report experiencing verbal and physical IPV, respectively, in at least one round. Husbands tend to be more empowered than their wives in most, but not all, dimensions. Yet, even in dimensions of empowerment dominated by men on average, the percentage of households in which individual wives are more empowered than their husbands is notable. In regressions, some measures of men's empowerment (e.g., ownership of assets) are negatively associated with verbal and any IPV. Some measures of women's empowerment (e.g., community influence) are associated with verbal, physical, and any IPV, but the signs are mixed. All in all, the findings suggest that men's empowerment may be a determinant of intimate partner violence in rural Bangladesh, and they also underscore the need to extend theories of empowerment.