Cultural Diffusion and Intimate Partner Violence in Malawi

Abstract

I examine the spread and influence of cultural models about intimate partner violence in Malawi. Intimate partner violence is of primary concern to transnational organizations working in Malawi, leading them to implement a variety of cultural messaging campaigns. I track their efforts and evaluate their influence on lay people. I rely on five national surveys carried out between 2000 and 2016, which I combine with a database of newspaper articles that research assistants and I collected, an administrative database of human rights projects, many organizations’ official reports, and key informant interviews. Finally, I leverage the timing of a social movement to combat intimate partner violence that occurred during the middle of one of the surveys I use. I conduct three related, yet standalone empirical studies. I begin by addressing the flow of cultural models about violence against women through media and the implications this has for people’s attitudes. Analyzing media content, I identify the pathways through which transnational organizations circulate messages condemning violence against women while foreign media entertainment companies largely perpetuate gender stereotypes. The number of newspaper articles critical of violence against women published in the month prior to a respondent’s personal survey interview date is positively associated with their stated rejection of physical partner violence. In contrast, men’s personal use of television and movies—a key source of media content perpetuating gender stereotypes in Malawi—is negatively associated with rejection. This findings demonstrate how being specific about cultural content improves understandings of global cultural diffusion. In the second study, I analyze the influence of human rights projects denouncing violence against women on people’s stated attitudes. Transnational organizations channel funding to projects carried out in specific locales, which in turn exposes people there to the cultural messages promoted. Among projects focused on violence against women, I distinguish between bureaucrat-led projects, which reinforced (mostly male) community leaders’ purview over marital/partnership conflicts, from projects that supported and expanded domestic activists’ awareness campaigns around the country. District-level funding for activist-led projects successfully increased women’s probability of expressing rejection of physical partner violence against women. Aid for bureaucrat-led projects, conversely, decreased men’s rejection of such violence. Transnational organizations’ projects influence lay people’s attitudes, but in unique ways depending on how the projects are implemented. The final study examines how the effects of transnational organizations’ human rights messages on lay people hinges on meso-level actors. Human rights campaigns in Malawi translate “gender violence” as nkhanza, an existing cultural concept referring to the violation of expected relationship responsibilities. Physical partner violence is normatively defined as nkhanza but so is refusing sex with one’s partner. I show that individuals interviewed after the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence campaign in Malawi in 2015, during which brokers denounced nkhanza, were more likely than individuals interviewed before the campaign to state they rejected physical partner violence. Women were also less likely to say they could refuse having sex with their partner. Additionally, women’s willingness to report physical partner abuse that they experienced long ago also increased following the campaign. These results emphasize the importance of vernacularization and human rights awareness. These studies clarify how human rights models are spread, interpreted, learned, and applied. Media, human rights projects, and social movements each serve as important diffusion mechanisms, shaping the cultural models people in Malawi know and use.