Abstract
Intimate partner violence (IPV) affects 36% of women in Sub-Saharan Africa. In this paper, we examine the relationship between decision-making within 31,243 couples and the incidence of IPV across 12 African countries. Using the wife’s responses to survey questions, we find that compared to joint decision-making, sole decision-making by the husband is associated with a 3.3 percentage point higher incidence of physical IPV in the last year, while sole decision-making by the wife is associated with a 10 percentage point higher incidence. Similar patterns hold for emotional and sexual violence. When we include the combined responses of the husband and wife about decision-making in the analysis, we identify joint decision-making as protective only when spouses agree that decisions are made jointly. Notably, agreement on joint decision-making is associated with lower IPV than agreement on decision-making by the husband. Constructs undergirding common IPV theories, namely attitudes towards violence, similarity of preferences, marital capital, and bargaining, do not explain the relationship. Our results are instead consistent with joint decision-making as a mechanism that allows spouses to share responsibility and mitigate conflict if the decision is later regretted.
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Friedemann-Sánchez and Lovatón (2012) perform a bivariate probit analysis while Svec and Andic (2018) run multinomial logistic regressions. Other analyses consider whether women’s responses that they have a say in household decisions are correlated with IPV (e.g., Mavisakalyan & Rammohan, 2021) without distinguishing whether the decision is joint.
The question is asked about large purchases overall and is not obtained by aggregating different survey questions on decision-making over individual asset purchases.
To determine a woman’s experience with emotional violence, she was asked “Did your (last) (husband/partner) ever: (a) say or do something to humiliate you in front of others? (b) threaten to hurt or harm you or someone you care about? (c) insult you or make you feel bad about yourself?”.
Similarly, a woman is considered to have experienced physical violence if her response to “Did your (last) (husband/partner) ever do any of the following things to you: (a) push you, shake you, or throw something at you? (b) slap you? (c) twist your arm or pull your hair? (d) punch you with his fist or with something that could hurt you? (e) kick you, drag you, or beat you up? (f) try to choke you or burn you on purpose? (g) threaten or attack you with a knife, gun, or other weapon?” is “yes” to any of the situations listed above. For determining the incidence of sexual violence, women are asked “Did your (last) (husband/partner) ever do any of the following things to you: (a) physically force you to have sexual intercourse with him when you did not want to? (b) physically force you to perform any other sexual acts you did not want to? (c) force you with threats or in any other way to perform sexual acts you did not want to?”.
The countries are Burkina Faso (2010), Burundi (2016), Comoros (2012), Ivory Coast (2011-12), Ethiopia (2016), Gambia (2013), Kenya (2014), Mali (2012-13), Nigeria (2013), Rwanda (2014), Zambia (2013-14), and Zimbabwe (2015). It should be noted that when looking at the relationship between decision-making and IPV, our sample changes due to data availability and conditionally applicable questions. We re-run our analysis for our smallest, most restrictive sample where all variables are available to ensure that our results are not driven by sample selection issues (results available upon request).
The set of household level characteristics includes a dichotomous variable for rural area, for household has electricity and wealth quantile dummies.
Both husband and wife were asked whether a husband is justified in beating his wife, in a range of scenarios. More specifically, spouses were asked if wife-beating is justified if (a) the wife goes out without telling the husband; (b) the wife neglects the children; (c) the wife argues with the husband; (d) the wife refuses to have sex with the husband; (e) the wife burns the food. We construct an indicator for each individual of whether they ever condone violence, which is =1 if they answer a yes to any of the five situations above and 0 otherwise. We then used the responses of each spouse to construct the desired variable.
Although the relationship between joint decision-making and IPV is sizeable and significant, the former should not be used as a standalone proxy for the latter. Overall in our sample, wives experienced physical IPV in 14% of households that agree on joint decision-making, while this rate was 17% in households where the couple agrees that decision-making isn’t joint. However, in some countries, knowing which couples don’t agree on who makes decisions may help in identifying women at higher risk of IPV. For example, in Burundi, wives experienced physical IPV in the last year in 13% of households that agree that the decision was joint, but in 25% of those that do not. Similarly large differences are observed in Rwanda and Mali.
Details of the variables included in these regressions and the respective coefficients are presented in appendix tables A2, A3 and A4.
To calculate the bounds, we use the Stata package psacalc using Rmax, that is 1.3 times the R-squared in specifications that control for observables, the lower bound is estimated using delta = 0 and upper bound is estimated using delta = 1.
The incidence of emotional violence in Burundi and physical violence in Burkina appears lower when the couple agrees on the woman making decisions rather than when they agree that decisions are made jointly, but the former pattern is found in only 0.34 and 0.11 percent of the country sample’s households respectively.
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Acknowledgements
This paper is a product of the Gender Innovation Lab, Office of the Chief Economist, Africa Region. The authors would like to thank participants at the Annual Meeting of the Society of the Economics of the Household, the 29th IAFFE Annual Conference, the Oxford Department of International Development’s Quantitative Development Studies workshop and Columbia University’s Student Research Breakfast for valuable comments on earlier versions of this paper. We are grateful to the World Bank Group’s Umbrella Facility for Gender Equality for financial support. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.
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Appendix
The coefficients from regressions of physical violence in the last 12 months on husband and wife’s decision-making responses for the 12 Sub-Saharan African countries in our sample. The bars represent 95% confidence intervals for the point estimates
The coefficients from regressions of emotional violence in the last 12 months on husband and wife’s decision-making responses for the 12 Sub-Saharan African countries in our sample. The bars represent 95% confidence intervals for the point estimates
The coefficients from regressions of sexual violence in the last 12 months on husband and wife’s decision-making responses for the 12 Sub-Saharan African countries in our sample. The bars represent 95% confidence intervals for the point estimates
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Donald, A., Doss, C., Goldstein, M. et al. Sharing responsibility through joint decision-making and implications for intimate-partner violence: evidence from 12 Sub-Saharan African Countries. Rev Econ Household 22, 35–66 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11150-023-09646-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11150-023-09646-w