Women's Working Status and Physical Spousal Violence in India

Abstract

Empirical fndings as well as theoretical predictions in the marriage bargaining literature suggest that women's fnancial independence has a positive effect on their empowerment. Findings in the domestic violence literature, however, challenge the generalization of the results. The theory of male backlash in the domestic violence literature predicts that in a patriarchal economy, an increase in women's economic independence will lead to an increase in cases of domestic violence targeted at women. Violence is a means of restoring the husband's authority over his wife particularly when the women's independence challenges the dominance of men. Patterns of physical spousal violence in India are in line with the theory of male backlash in a sense that working women are more subject to physical spousal violence than non-working women. However, the interpretation is made difficult by issues of reverse causality and omitted variable bias. In this study, I address these issues by exploiting changes in rural women's labor market outcomes exogenously driven by the rainfall shocks and the rice-wheat dichotomy in women's employment. The IV regressions results indicate that women's labor force participation decreases the probability of physical spousal violence by 0.07. The fndings suggest that the positive relationship between women's working status and the physical spousal violence is likely to be driven by reverse causality and omitted variable bias rather than the male backlash.