Women Empowerment, Social Norms and Domestic Violence

家庭暴力影响着全世界30%的妇女和50%以上生活在冲突或冲突后社区的妇女。预防家庭暴力很重要，不仅因为这是对妇女权利和自由的侵犯，还因为家庭暴力对经济增长产生负面影响，使结构性贫困永久化。造成这种影响的一个重要机制是家庭暴力与配偶之间缺乏合作之间的相互作用，导致健康、教育和经济成果不理想。这种情况在受冲突影响的地区更为严重，在这些地区，家庭合作对冲突后恢复至关重要。该项目的目的是更好地了解如何设计有效和高效的干预措施，以减少家庭暴力，特别是在受冲突影响地区的弱势群体中。我们的研究推进了ESRC-DFID扶贫研究联合基金的第三个目标：“在脆弱和受冲突影响的情况下，可以采取哪些措施来减少暴力和不稳定对最贫困人口的风险和影响，并提高和平建设、国家建设和更广泛的发展干预措施的有效性？”“为了设计有效减少家庭暴力的干预措施，有必要了解导致家庭暴力的具体因素。”迄今为止，对家庭暴力干预的研究只提供了初步的、往往相互矛盾的证据。我们的项目旨在大大提高我们对家庭暴力、其原因以及干预措施如何更好地减少家庭暴力的理解。我们将通过解决两个问题来实现这一目标：问题1：不同因素在多大程度上影响家庭暴力的流行？以往的研究已经确定了影响家庭暴力发生的各种因素，如丈夫的心理特征、女性对家庭暴力的抵制和接受程度、女性的收入赚取机会、家庭暴力的社会规范以及女性的赋权水平。然而，每个个体因素对家庭暴力的影响程度尚不清楚。问题2：不同因素之间的相互作用如何驱动家庭暴力，并影响家庭合作和多维贫困，特别是对弱势群体？这些问题将通过研究乐施会在埃及120个农村社区实施的家庭暴力干预措施来回答。之所以选择埃及，是因为它是少数几个同时实施多种家庭暴力干预措施的冲突后国家之一，这使我们能够测试所有因素的影响。这些干预措施包括以下目标：-通过改变妇女对其权利和对暴力的可接受性的信念，赋予妇女权力。-改变男性对家庭暴力的态度和社会规范。-通过提供小额信贷改变妇女的经济机会。在每个社区，一部分人口将接受干预，并与其配偶一起参加基线和终点调查。他们还将参与一些实验，在这些实验中，他们决定如何分配资源，以衡量配偶的议价能力和家庭中的合作水平。通过这些实验，我们将能够开发新的工具来衡量家庭暴力和妇女赋权。我们研究的主要影响目标是降低家庭暴力的发生率，加强家庭合作和家庭多维成果，减少低收入国家和其他发展中国家低收入家庭的结构性贫困，特别是在冲突或冲突后地区。我们的研究将使决策者和非政府组织能够针对特定弱势群体设计更有效和高效的家庭暴力干预措施。它还将提供关于家庭暴力的规模、原因和后果的证据。这包括家庭暴力对加强家庭合作和家庭多维成果以及减少结构性贫困的影响。这些结果将用于加强游说政府和捐助者支持家庭暴力干预措施。

Domestic violence (DV) affects 30% of women worldwide and more than 50% of women living in conflict or post-conflict communities. The prevention of DV is important, not only because it is a violation of women's rights and freedoms, but also because DV negatively affects economic growth and perpetuates structural poverty. An important mechanism driving this effect is the interaction between DV and low cooperation between spouses, resulting in less than optimal health, education and economic outcomes. This dynamic is exacerbated in conflict-affected zones, where household cooperation is essential for post-conflict recovery. The aim of this project is to better understand how to design effective and efficient interventions aimed at reducing DV, especially among vulnerable groups in conflict-affected areas. Our research advances goal three of the ESRC-DFID Joint fund for poverty alleviation research: 'What measures can be taken to reduce the risks and impact of violence and instability on the poorest and increase the effectiveness of peace-building, state-building and wider development interventions in fragile and conflict-affected situations?'In order to design interventions to reduce DV that actually work, it is necessary to understand the specific factors driving it. To date, research on DV interventions has only provided preliminary and often contradictory evidence. Our project aims to substantially advance our understanding of DV, its causes and how interventions can better reduce it. We will accomplish this by addressing two questions:Question 1: To what extent do different factors affect the prevalence of domestic violence?Previous research has identified various factors that influence the occurrence of DV such as the husbands' psychological traits, women's resistance and acceptance of DV, women's income earning opportunities, social norms about DV and the level of women's empowerment. The extent to which each individual factor influences DV is, however, unknown. Question 2: How do the interactions between the different factors drive DV and influence household cooperation and multidimensional poverty, especially for vulnerable groups?These questions will be answered by studying several DV interventions implemented in 120 rural communities in Egypt by Oxfam Novib. Egypt is chosen because it is one of the few post-conflict countries where several DV interventions are being implemented simultaneously, allowing us to test the effect of all factors. These include interventions with the following objectives: - Empowering women, by changing their beliefs about their rights and the acceptability of violence.- Changing men's attitudes and social norms about DV.- Changing women's economic opportunities through the provision of microcredit. In each community a sub-section of the population will receive an intervention and participate, with their spouse, in a base- and end-line survey. They will also participate in experiments where they make decision about allocating resources to measure bargaining power of the spouses and the level of cooperation in the household. Through these experiments we will be able to develop new tools to measure DV and women's empowerment. The main impact objective of our research is to reduce the prevalence of DV, enhance household cooperation and multidimensional household outcomes, and reduce structural poverty in low-income households in LIC's and other developing countries, especially in conflict or post-conflict areas. Our research will enable policy-makers and NGOs to design more effective and efficient DV interventions targeted at specific vulnerable groups. It will also provide evidence on the scale, causes and consequences of DV. This includes the effect of DV on enhancing household cooperation and multidimensional household outcomes, and reducing structural poverty. These results will be used to enhance the lobby for government and donor support to DV interventions.