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Employment, Empowerment, and Spousal Violence on Women in Developing Countries

  • Chapter
Handbook on Well-Being of Working Women

Part of the book series: International Handbooks of Quality-of-Life ((IHQL))

Abstract

Although female labor force participation is expected to empower women and enhance their well-being, it could generate unintended consequences, especially where the prevailing culture considers female employment a challenge to male dominance. The existing empirical studies in developing countries suggest that female employment tends to increase the risk of spousal violence against them, rather than improving their bargaining power. However, the existing studies are limited in that their conclusions are often based on correlational, not causal, inference. More studies are needed that exploit exogenous variations in female work status to identify a clear-cut causal relationship between their employment and spousal violence. At the same time, policies that promote female empowerment through employment should take a sophisticated approach that can minimize cultural resistance.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The analysis covers the surveys of 25 countries: Burkina Faso (1992–1993), Cameroon (1991), Ghana (1993), Kenya (1993), Madagascar (1992), Malawi (1992), Namibia (1992), Niger (1992), Nigeria (1990), Rwanda (1992), Senegal (1992–1993), Zambia (1992), Egypt (1992), Morocco (1992), Bangladesh (1993–1994), Indonesia (1991), Pakistan (1990–1991), Philippines (1993), Turkey (1993), Bolivia (1993–1994), Brazil (1991), Columbia (1990), Dominican Republic (1991), Paraguay (1990), and Peru (1991–1992).

  2. 2.

    The capabilities approach was pioneered by Amartya Sen and has been influential for defining and evaluating human development and well-being. It has been a widely accepted paradigm in the field of development and constituted a theoretical basis of the Human Development Index (Fukuda-Parr 2003). The capabilities approach emphasizes what people can do or be (functionings) and their freedom to choose among the functionings (capabilities) rather than their command over commodities.

  3. 3.

    Nussbaum (2000) defines bodily integrity as “being able to move freely from place to place; having one’s bodily boundaries treated as sovereign, i.e. being able to be secure against assault, including sexual assault, child sexual abuse, and domestic violence; having opportunities for sexual satisfaction and for choice in matters of reproduction.”

  4. 4.

    DHS has been collecting information on violence against women since 1990. It constitutes a useful source of data on spousal violence, given that it also covers a wide range of demographic and socio-economic variables. Moreover, the DHS program used a standard module and improved comparability of different countries. As of mid-2013, domestic violence data of 37 countries are available.

  5. 5.

    The study covers the surveys of 9 countries: Cambodia (2000), Columbia (2000), Dominican Republic (2002), Egypt (1995–1996), Haiti (2000), India (1998–2000), Nicaragua (1997–1998), Peru (2000), and Zambia (2001–2002).

  6. 6.

    The study covers the surveys of 10 countries: Bangladesh (2004), Bolivia (2003–2004), Dominican Republic (2002), Haiti (2005–2006), Kenya (2003), Malawi (2004–2005), Moldova (2005), Rwanda (2005), Zambia (2001–2002), and Zimbabwe (2005–2006).

  7. 7.

    Vyas and Watts (2009) also address how a woman’s economic empowerment affects the risk of intimate partner violence in low and middle income countries by reviewing published studies from 41 sites. Although they summarize the reviewed studies by focusing on the effects of economic variables (employment status or earnings), the economic empowerment of women is not necessarily the main focus of the reviewed studies. In many of these studies, female economic empowerment is rather treated as one of many risk factors of violence.

  8. 8.

    The analysis of the current violence covers 7 countries: Cambodia (2000), Dominican Republic (2002), Egypt (1995–1996), Haiti (2000), India (1998–2000), Nicaragua (1997–1998), and Zambia (2001–2002).

  9. 9.

    The study further finds that the risk of violence also responds to a husband’s employment status. Women whose husbands have a hard time finding or keeping a job at one visit are more than twice as likely to experience physical spousal violence by the next visit. Also, if husbands are employed at one visit, but have a hard time finding a job by the next visit, their wives are 70 % more likely to experience violence by the next visit, as compared to women whose husbands have stable employment. These results might be driven by the husbands’ stress due to job insecurity, which can be also interpreted as frustration caused by failure to keep the culturally established standard of male dominance.

  10. 10.

    In India, female labor force participation is substantially higher in rice-growing eastern and southern states than in wheat-growing northwest states, because women have a comparative advantage in rice production (Bardhan 1974; Boserup 1970; Indian National Science Academy and Chinese Academy of Sciences 2001; Miller 1981). Further, crop production in India relies heavily on rainfall, and rice production is much more dependent on water than wheat production (Mbiti 2008). Therefore, positive rainfall shocks in rice-growing states are expected to increase the demand for female labor more than they would in wheat-growing states.

  11. 11.

    For example, market wages of female labor would constitute a convincing exogenous source of employment variations. Unfortunately, however, that is often not a viable option in developing countries where women are predominantly self-employed or work in the informal sector, of which quality wage data are not always readily available.

  12. 12.

    Women’s participation in microcredit programs is typically endogenous. Given that participating women select themselves into a participation group, there is self-selection bias. Further, unobservable village-level attributes might affect both participation and the outcome of participation. In order to address the two sources of bias, their identification strategy combines the credit eligibility rule (having land with less than 0.5 acres) with variations in program availability among villages. Comparing the outcomes of credit-eligible households between program and non-program villages yields the effect of the program free from self-selection bias. Further, comparing the outcomes of eligible households and non-eligible households within a village eliminates the bias due to village-level attributes.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Baylor University, Waco, TX, USA

    Yoo-Mi Chin

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Management College of Business Administration, University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls, Iowa, USA

    Mary L. Connerley

  2. Department of Management and Marketing School of Management, Rhode Island College, Providence, Rhode Island, USA

    Jiyun Wu

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Chin, YM. (2016). Employment, Empowerment, and Spousal Violence on Women in Developing Countries. In: Connerley, M., Wu, J. (eds) Handbook on Well-Being of Working Women. International Handbooks of Quality-of-Life. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9897-6_43

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9897-6_43

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