Violence against women is a pervasive phenomenon common in developing and developed countries alike. Violence against women manifests in multiple behaviours including rape, sexual coercion, incest, honour killings, female genital mutilation, acid burnings, stalking and trafficking. Perpetrators of violence against women can be intimate partners, family members, members of the community or strangers. Across cultures, the most common experience for women is violence by intimate partners.
In the past decade, research in developing countries has established a rigorous, quantitative evidence base on the risk factors, prevalence and, to a lesser extent, the health impacts of intimate partner violence (IPV). However, progress has been slower in exploring its economic costs and broader welfare impacts, partly due to the lack of a comprehensive methodology adequate for such costing studies in developing country settings. To address this gap, the ICRW and its partners, with funding from UNFPA, conducted a study to refine and field test a methodology to estimate the costs as well as the impacts of intimate partner violence to households, communities and, ultimately, the national economy.
The pilot study, started in 2006, took place in three countries—Bangladesh, Morocco and Uganda—in partnership with local institutions. All three countries report high prevalence rates and recently rolled out legal, policy and programmatic efforts to curb intimate partner violence. This made these sites appealing for research because of the expressed stakeholder interest and demand for studies on intimate partner violence. Methodological purposes also motivated selection of these particular countries because of the different socio-cultural and economic structures and varied resources for addressing IPV.
In multiple sites in each country, research teams interviewed around 2,000 women in Bangladesh and Morocco, and more than 1,200 in Uganda. A select sample of service providers was interviewed to estimate the economic costs of intimate partner violence and assess its impacts on a number of individual- and household-level welfare measures.
This guide reviews findings from the literature on the economic costs of IPV, with a particular focus on studies conducted in developing countries. It describes aspects of a methodology that can be used in developing country contexts to estimate the economic costs of IPV to households and their communities and establish its impact on individual and household welfare. The guide also discusses various experiences from the sites where the methodology was tested and includes data collection instruments used in the study.
Key Findings:
- It is evident that intimate partner violence is a significant threat to the household’s economic welfare both in the short- and long-term when reviewing the potential direct costs of IPV to women and households as well as its likely impact on women’s work.
- IPV diverts scarce public resources for essential health, security and infrastructure services within communities.
- IPV impacts children’s health and education, potentially contributing to the intergenerational transfer of poverty.
Recommendations:
In light of all these findings, it is essential that IPV be addressed not only within the realm of human rights and public health but as a serious development issue. Making this case requires a strong evidence base that demonstrates the magnitude of these adverse impacts of IPV to effectively argue for IPV prevention and intervention programs.
