Attitudes to Domestic Violence in Low- and Middle-income Countries: A Multi-Level Approach to Prevention

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The project will provide reliable, high quality data on attitudes to domestic violence (DV) in low- and middle-income countries across East Asia and the Pacific, Europe and Central Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, Middle East and North Africa, South Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa. This is one of the first studies to focus on the systemic social, political and economic influences on societal acceptability of DV making a much needed contribution to research and national and international policy aimed at changing attitudes and preventing DV.This work is important because DV against women is the most common form of violence against women worldwide and is far-reaching in its impact. There is clear evidence that gender equality is integral to the achievement of the MDGs, however the failure to address DV is a gap in the current MDGs. Research in over 35 countries worldwide has shown that women's and men's attitudes justifying DV is strongly associated with DV perpetration and victimisation. Thus, to optimally target resources into evidence-based prevention it is vital to identify those wider social, political and economic factors that reinforce societal acceptability of DV. This study will use nationally-representative household surveys with individual-, country- and regional-level data and sources of high quality metadata on the social and economic development of countries and geographic regions to answer a set of important questions about attitudes to DV across low- and middle-income countries and the systemic factors influencing these attitudes. For example, how do attitudes to DV differ between countries and geographic regions? Are economic factors like women's labour force participation, ownership of property and other assets associated with societal attitudes to DV? Does access to education and educational attainment explain differences in attitudes to DV? Does social development and economic inequality influence attitudes to DV? Are social institutions like family laws, access to productive resources associated with attitudes to DV? Does women's representation in Parliament and participation in public life influence societal attitudes to DV? While government legislation is considered important to combat this problem, there has been little research on which governments act and the effects of legislation on attitudes. This study will answer these questions by analysing the social, economic and political profile of nations (and geographic regions within which they are nested) which have DV legislation, and the effect of legislation on shifting women's and men's attitudes to DV. These questions are best addressed using a combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches. In addition to analysing datasets, a review of DV legislation and key informant interviews will be conducted with policy-makers and representatives of national and international organisations within select case study countries.Data produced by the study will allow for the creation of a database which will provide robust and interpretable data on attitudes to DV within the context of key social development and economic empowerment indicators, and the existence and quality of DV legislation and policy. These data will be of interest to and can be used by academics across disciplines, policymakers, non-governmental organisations, international development agencies and donors interested in DV prevention strategies and the measurement of attitudes to DV as a component of gender equality and empowerment.There is increasing recognition of the need to focus on prevention, however evidence-based prevention is still nascent especially in relation to tackling societal acceptability of DV. This work is timely given that the thematic priorities of UN Women are gender-based violence, economic empowerment and women's political participation and the focus of the 2013 UN Commission on the Status of Women is on preventing violence against women and girls.