An article in VoxDev features research by NU Assistant Professor Bilge Erten and Pinar Keskin (Assistant Professor, Wellesley) on the effect of a particular empowerment mechanism – female employment
While women’s economic empowerment has long been touted as an important tool in reducing risk of intimate partner violence, the relationship between female economic empowerment and domestic violence can be complicated. On one hand, an increase in resources available to women may increase their bargaining power within the household, reducing their exposure to violence. On the other hand, a rise in female resources through, for example, conditional cash transfers may strengthen men’s incentives to use violence as an instrument for extracting resources from women. In fact, a growing body of work has shown that an increase in resources available to women may trigger backlash effects from men (Bloch and Rao 2002, Bobonis et al. 2013, Erten and Keskin 2018).
