José Raimundo Carvalho

Globally, 30% of women have experienced physical or sexual violence (Devries, et Alli (2013)). Violence against women can have harsh consequences for the women, their children, and society. It often causes injuries, some of which are fatal. The physical and psychological trauma can lead to mental health problems and limited sexual and reproductive control over sexual, reproductive, personal, family, and labor-market choices. Several studies document adverse intergenerational impacts of partner violence upon the survival, health and education of children of victimized women. The estimated cost of domestic violence (DV) worldwide stands at 4.3 billion USD (see, Fearon & Hoeffler (2014)).

 

Gender-based violence is increasingly a policy priority, The UN declared response to violence against women and girls imperative in 2006 (United Nations (2006)), and the new Sustainable Development Goals explicitly call for "elimination of all forms of violence against women and girls", (United Nations – Women (2018)). Despite the known costs of DV and global reduction targets, there is no evidence of a sustained reduction in DV in developing countries.

 

Our project will evaluate the design and outcome of a scale pilot-RCT to assess the causal impact of specific educational and gender relations awareness programs on DV within a two-arm randomized control trial with the aim of identifying policies that can be taken to scale. Although our current effort proposes to implement and analyze a pilot-RCT, this a necessary methodologic step to offer insights to and back up a more complex and larger RCT in the near future.  Our pilot will deliver two programs: 1) A job-ready training program for women, designed to increase their employability and thereby to increase their bargaining power and welfare within the household; and 2) An awareness program targeting women, structured to change social norms relating to the acceptability of DV.

 

We are applying for funds in Brazil and in Europe to facilitate the start of this process. However, it is important to mention that the Alderbert Foundation 2018, Sweden has awarded us 50,000 Euro for the project. The funding can be used for general payments for the project including funding training costs, travel expenses and payments to services. In particular, we want to pilot the two interventions described above. This will involve (i) engaging with the largest NGO addressing DV in Brazil, the Maria de Penha Institute, to design both interventions- job training and awareness- and then (ii) implementing the programs on randomly selected groups of women. We will conduct a follow-up survey 12 months after the interventions to evaluate them. We expect to do a lot of the groundwork before, during and after the delivery of programs. For example, we need to select and prepare the sample, develop a “Distance Learning” platform, identify private firms that are available to provide job training, and to leverage the NGO’s experience to design details of a sequence of awareness sessions with men and women that may, on a sufficiently large scale, lead to norm shifting. I thought it’s important to cast a wide net of potential outcomes