Research from Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) has used data from the gender violence macro-surveys of the Women’s Institute, which provide information on the employment status and other socioeconomic characteristics of the couple’s members, such as age, The educational level, the place of residence and the level of income of the household. Researchers have employed econometric techniques to isolate the causal effect of the employment status of both partners on mistreatment.
The main conclusion of the paper , published in Applied Economics , is that there is a lower incidence of domestic violence in the more equal families in terms of labor status, in which the two partners work.
For these families, the percentage of mistreatment is 1%. “These more egalitarian couples are more likely to share values that challenge more traditional gender roles, particularly those associated with the male’s dominant role and attitude toward violence,” comments one of the authors, César Alonso, from the Department of Economics The UC3M.
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“When the male does not work, the risk of violence may increase as his traditional role as breadwinner is questioned,” said another of the study’s authors, Raquel Carrasco.
DEMOGRAPHIC CHARACTERISTICS
There are other demographic characteristics that also affect abuse: increased education tends to reduce the risk of domestic abuse; And the greater the age of women, the greater the likelihood of gender-based violence. To the extent that different risks of abuse are found for each type of partner, policies aimed at alleviating this problem would have to be different, according to the researchers.
Researchers believe that these results can be used to propose policies against this social scourge. In the short term, prevention policies could be promoted towards those most vulnerable groups (in particular, couples at increased risk of social exclusion), as well as legal compliance with preventive mechanisms to deter violence and the extension of reception and assistance procedures for The victims and their children.
In the long term, educational policies aimed at promoting effective gender equality, transmitting the values of gender equality since childhood, and policies guaranteeing the empowerment and empowerment of women through employment could be promoted.
