Women demand government action: Violence against women and local government legitimacy

Abstract

Despite improvements in legislation and many countries adopting legal frameworks that advocate for women's rights, violence against women (VAW) continues to severely threaten women's lives. The agreed conclusions of the 68th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) emphasize the need for immediate state action to eliminate gender-based violence. Drawing from previous studies showing that citizens care about government fairness in the implementation of public policy, we posit that women reporting a high incidence of VAW in their place of residence make local governments accountable for not implementing effective policies to address their safety concerns, resulting in lower local government legitimacy. We test our hypotheses using nationally representative surveys in Northern Central America, a region with some of the highest VAW rates in the world. The results show that women demand state action to eradicate VAW and when local governments do not take action to effectively protect them, women withdraw their political support.