Primary Submission Category: Gender
The Double-Edged Sword: Unveiling the Impact of Women’s Financial Inclusion on Intimate Partner Violence in India
Authors: Shreemoyee Saha, Punarjit Roychowdhury, Gaurav Dhamija,
Presenting Author: Shreemoyee Saha*
We empirically examine the causal impact of women’s financial inclusion on their exposure to Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) using data from the fifth round of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS), India. Establishing a causal link between women’s financial inclusion and IPV, however, is challenging due to unobserved confounders and reverse causality. To overcome these obstacles, we adopt a nonparametric bounds approach. Relying on fairly weak assumptions, we find robust evidence that women’s financial inclusion leads to a significant increase in their exposure to IPV. Further, we provide suggestive evidence that this result arises because women’s financial inclusion is likely to disrupt patriarchal beliefs about gender roles, leads to female guilt, and increases husbands’ use of IPV for instrumental reasons. Our findings suggest that empowering women financially, while crucial, may inadvertently increase their vulnerability to IPV unless such initiatives are paired with efforts to shift underlying cultural norms surrounding gender.