Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a global health, human rights, and development problem with far reaching economic and societal consequences. Mexico has a very high prevalence of IPV: 43.9 percent of Mexican women have reported experiencing IPV at the hands of their current partner. The literature on women’s empowerment reveals mixed evidence on whether women’s employment is associated with higher levels of IPV or whether it is protective. As the effect of women’s work operates differently in different contexts, we aim to estimate the effect of women’s employment on their risk of experiencing IPV in rural and urban Mexico. We use propensity score matching (PSM) to address the potential selection bias between women who are employed and not utilizing the nationally representative 2016 Mexican National Survey on the Dynamics of Household Relationships (ENDIREH). Three different measures of women’s employment will be analyzed: whether they had engaged in any productive work outside of the home in the past year, whether they received payment in cash for their productive work, and whether they received conditional cash transfers through Oportunidades. Addressing VAW contributes to four national goals and UN Sustainable Development Goal 5. Given the high levels of IPV in Mexico and the increased number of women in the workforce, our results can have important implications for how to target health and support to survivors of violence who are employed and not in both urban and rural areas.