The endogeneity of domestic violence: understanding women empowerment through autonomy

Abstract

Women’s autonomy is known to incite intimate partner violence (IPV) in developing countries. We argue for the endogeneity of women’s autonomy with IPV, which is often ignored in the existing literature, for understanding the causal association. Using the Bangladesh Demography and Health Survey (2007), we isolate the effect of autonomy on IPV taking into account the possible endogeneity using instrument variables and special regressor estimations, proposing the special regressor as a more reliable approach to estimating binary choice models with discrete endogenous regressors. Our study finds increased women’s autonomy to lead to higher incidents of IPV for a South Asian patriarchal society such as Bangladesh. Thereby, policies catered towards women empowerment by increasing women’s autonomy should concurrently focus on other determinants of IPV. Undue male controlling behaviour, witnessing inter-parental abuse as a child and early marriage are also found to aggravate IPV. Hence there should be simultaneous programmes that aim to relax male controlling behaviour over women, provide counselling for those who have witnessed inter-parental abuse as a child, and laws prohibiting child marriage, still prevalent in South Asian societies, should be reinforced. These findings have strong policy implications suggesting the dual nature of improving women’s autonomy in empowering women while aggravating IPV.