Direct cash transfers coupled with Behavior Change Communication (BCC) can reduce violence against women inflicted by their partners by 26 percent, according to a landmark study in Bangladesh conducted by researchers at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and Cornell University.
The reductions in violence were found 6-10 months after the intervention ended, providing the first evidence that such benefits can be sustained after cash transfers and related programming cease, says a media release.
"Our study in Bangladesh found that the combination of transfers and behavior change communication led to women experiencing less violence from their partners even after the program ended; but transfers alone did not have this effect," says Shalini Roy, research fellow, IFPRI.
Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) is pervasive globally, with estimates showing that one in three adult women worldwide experienced some form of IPV.
Much of the existing research on the effects of cash transfers on IPV has been conducted in Latin America, but South Asia has among the highest regional rates of IPV in the world, with 41 percent prevalence. In rural Bangladesh, this number is even higher, with over 70 percent of married women having experienced IPV according to some sources.
Forthcoming in The Review of Economics and Statistics, and jointly authored by IFPRI's Shalini Roy, Melissa Hidrobo, Akhter Ahmed, and Cornell's John Hoddinott, the paper 'Transfers, behavior change communication, and intimate partner violence:
Post-program evidence from rural Bangladesh' examines how providing cash or food transfers to very poor women in Bangladesh- with or without intensive nutrition behavior change communication - affected IPV. The study draws on the Transfer Modality Research Initiative (TMRI), a pilot safety net program in rural Bangladesh implemented from 2012 to 2014.
TMRI's primary aim was not to change gender dynamics, but to improve household food security and child nutrition. To assess its effectiveness, the World Food Program in collaboration with IFPRI conducted an impact evaluation of the program. Mothers of young children from poor households were randomly assigned to a control group or to groups that received cash or food transfers, with or without intensive BCC related to child nutrition.
Components of the BCC included weekly group meetings for the target women, led by trained nutrition workers (to which husbands and mothers-in law were also sometimes invited); bimonthly visits by nutrition workers to the women's homes; and monthly group meetings between program staff and influential community leaders (such as village headmen, religious leaders and educators) to share the information being conveyed to women.
To complement the main impact evaluation, researchers conducted another survey 6-10 months after the program ended, to assess the post-program impacts on IPV. IPV is a pervasive public health problem worldwide. It has global economic ramifications.
and it is the leading cause of women's death by homicide.The results suggest that transfers alone were not effective in reducing partner violence against women after the program ended; but inclusion of BCC brought a more sustained reduction in violence.
The study highlights three possibilities for why adding BCC led to a sustained reduction in violence against women: First, food or cash transfers linked to BCC caused sustained increases in women's bargaining power, more so than transfers alone.
"The transfers combined with BCC increased women's social interaction and knowledge, increasing their empowerment. This likely persisted after the program ended, making them less willing to accept violent behavior," says Hidrobo.
Second, women's increased social interaction made any physical violence more visible to the community. This increased the probability that men inflicting it would be caught and would face social disapproval, increasing the "social costs" to men of inflicting violence, even after the program ended.
Third, combining transfers with BCC caused greater long-term improvements in household well-being than transfers alone. This eased poverty-related stress, a trigger for violence.
Such landmark findings could have important policy relevance because cash transfers are widely-used policy tools in the developing world, says Roy.
This editorial was originally published in The Daily AsianAge on 05 November 2018.