GCRF: Economic empowerment and intimate partner violence in Sub-Saharan Africa

Intimate partner violence is a crucial human rights, development and public health issue, with one in three women worldwide reporting physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence. The prevalence of intimate partner violence is particularly high in the Southern and Eastern Africa, where 39 to 46% of women report intimate partner violence during their lifetime. Despite increasing evidence for the worsened health as a result of partner violence, little is known about how to prevent it. Economic empowerment may be a solution, but research has shown mixed evidence for how (if at all) it improves women's experience of intimate partner violence or reduces men's perpetration. It is particularly important to understand the dynamics of economic empowerment and partner violence in sub-Saharan Africa in order to design effective interventions and improve health across the continent.
We will explore the extent to which economic empowerment is associated with intimate partner violence, what forms of economic empowerment are crucial to reduce intimate partner violence, how men's access to resources influences male perpetration of partner violence and how economic and empowerment changes affect the occurrence of intimate partner violence. We propose to empirically examine these enduring questions using our team's existing data from trials we are conducting in Tanzania and South Africa. Data from a rural (Tanzania) and an urban (South Africa) studies will investigate how different forms of economic empowerment affect women's experience and men's perpetration of intimate partner violence. Additional qualitative data from Tanzania and South Africa will explore what "power" in economic empowerment interventions and programme actually means to women and how economic empowerment affects their relationship and their experiences of intimate partner violence. These two case study countries will inform a deeper analysis using data from the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) of 21 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, namely Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Congo Democratic Republic, Cote d'Ivore, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The DHS analysis will be able to investigate the association between economic empowerment factors and intimate partner violence beyond the individual levels to also explore community level factors that might contribute to intimate partner violence and map these associations graphically. Lastly, longitudinal analysis of the Tanzanian and South African trials will provide evidence for how changes in economic status and empowerment influence women's experience and men's use of partner violence.

Lessons from this proposal will guide the field towards interventions that are tailored to reduce intimate partner violence through economic empowerment, but also considering other factors in the ecological framework. The research team will work closely with the World Health Organisation and existing DFID consortia to reduce violence against women as a method to ensure insights are translated into global policy. We will also work with local governments and non-governmental organisations to share the knowledge generated by this proposed research to ensure that women and men are offered tailored economic empowerment interventions that will help them to live a life free of violence. Our team of emerging researchers from the United Kingdom, Tanzania, and South Africa will deepen existing expertise through tailored training opportunities and ongoing interdisciplinary collaboration. With support from the ESRC Secondary Analysis Call, our team will be in a position to apply our secondary evidence towards a novel intervention for reducing partner violence in Tanzania and South Africa.

This research aims to provide a better understanding of the effect of economic empowerment on intimate partner violence. The proposed project will be beneficial for a wide range of stakeholders, first of all for women in sub-Saharan Africa who experience intimate partner violence or participate in economic empowerment programmes, such as micro finance. Beyond that, we believe that the findings of the proposed research will be of high interest to policy makers and programmers at non-governmental organisations, national governments and international agencies working to reduce intimate partner violence or providing economic empowerment, especially economic empowerment type interventions, such as micro-finance services. Given the strong leadership in the academic field to prevent and address violence against women and to design and evaluate interventions, this study also has the potential to inform future development by influencing future intervention designs and programming.

The research team is very well placed at the Gender Violence and Health Centre (GVHC) at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine to ensure that the findings of the proposed study are translated into practice and reach those who will benefit most from the research findings. GVHC is known for its conceptual advancements in the field of violence against women, its commitment to scientifically rigorous methods and dedication to impact and wide dissemination of research findings to influence policy and practice. The proposed research will be able to draw on the long term relationships GVHC has established with key stakeholders worldwide, especially in developing countries through its lead participation in research consortia addressing violence against women. In addition, the research team will work closely with Dr Garcia Moreno from its non-academic partner the World Health Organisation (WHO), a global leader in violence against women research with a wide network reaching policy makers, academics and local, national and international stakeholders. This proposed research links well with the major ongoing work of GVHC and the institutions it works with and can also draw on networks of institutions the international co-investigators are based in, such as the Mwanza Intervention Trial Unit and the University of Dodoma in Tanzania and the University of Witwatersrand and Sisters for Life in South Africa.

In the short to medium term, the project will be able to impact policy and practice through traditional academic outputs such as peer-reviewed journal papers and conference presentations. This will take place in panel or single presentations at selected key conferences, such as the Sexual Violence Research Initiative (SVRI) Forum (http://www.svri.org) that reaches academic audiences as well as practitioners, policy makers and major donors in the violence against women field. Further impact will also be achieved by stakeholder meetings in South Africa and Tanzania as well as capacity building at the institutions that will raise the awareness of intimate partner violence research in general and inform ongoing intervention studies aimed at reducing intimate partner violence through economic empowerment. Towards the end of the project, we will email policy briefs and geographical maps visually displaying the findings to key stakeholders and further distribute them via existing mailing lists (SVRI, STRIVE and What Works) and other social media outlets, e.g. Twitter and publish them on the GVHC webpage. An information sheet will also be developed for dissemination via the WHO webpage.

In the long term, the project aims to inform future intervention design, development and programming as it will provide micro-finance providers with the necessary evidence to tailor their project to women's and their family's needs. By distributing the findings to policy makers and donors, the project also aims to influence policies with the resulting in-depth knowledge