800318

research-article2018
JIVXXX10.1177/0886260518800318Journal of Interpersonal ViolenceKhalid and Choudhry

Original Research
Journal of Interpersonal Violence
1­–16
Violence and Economic © The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/0886260518800318
https://doi.org/10.1177/0886260518800318
Women in Pakistan: An journals.sagepub.com/home/jiv

Empirical Investigation

Javeria Khalid1 and Misbah Tanveer Choudhry2

Abstract
This article empirically investigates whether women’s access to economic
resources acts as a risk factor or protective factor for spousal (emotional
and physical) violence against them, particularly in the case of Pakistan. Using
data from Pakistan Demographic and Health Survey (PDHS) 2012 to 2013,
we employed logistic regression to investigate this relationship between
women’s access to economic resources and spousal violence against them
by using two indicators: (a) whether she earns money in cash and/or in-kind
and (b) whether she owns property. The results indicate that women who
earn in cash and/or in-kind face greater violence. Education can reduce the
violence against women and family history of violence contributes positively
for greater violence. Result also confirms existence of regional disparity in
this regard. Based on findings of this study we provide policy suggestions to
mitigate the issue of spousal violence against women.

Keywords
intimate partner violence, physical and emotional violence, economic
empowerment, empirical modeling

1Punjab Economic Research Institute, Lahore, Pakistan

2Lahore University of Management Sciences, Pakistan

Corresponding Author:
Javeria Khalid, Punjab Economic Research Institute, 48 Civic Center, Johar Town, Lahore
54000, Pakistan.
Email: javeria_kh@hotmail.com
2 Journal of Interpersonal Violence 00(0)

Introduction
Intimate Partner Violence (IPV), caused by current or former spouses and
partners, is defined as behavior within an intimate relationship that causes
physical, sexual or psychological harm, including acts of physical aggression,
sexual coercion, psychological abuse and controlling behaviors. (World Health
Organization [WHO], 2010)

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is not just a bane of developed countries. It is

highly prevalent in both developed and developing countries of the world
(Vyas, Jansen, Heise, & Mbwambo, 2015). According to a World Health
Organization (WHO) report, 23.2% of ever partnered women experienced
lifetime physical and/or sexual violence in high income countries. This rate
stood at 37.7% in South Asia. It is important to explore the extent and con-
tributing factors of IPV due to its associated adverse health outcomes for the
victims. Women who experience partner violence suffer from higher rates of
health problems and risk behavior including sexual diseases such as HIV/
AIDS, reproductive health issues, perinatal health issues, mental health
issues, injuries, and death through homicide and suicide (García-Moreno
et al., 2013). Statistics also reveal that 38% of all murders of women are com-
mitted by intimate partners, and 42% of women who experience physical and
sexual violence sustain injuries as a result of that violence (García-Moreno
et al., 2013).
Violence Against Women (VAW), particularly IPV or spousal violence
prevalence rates in Pakistan, vary between 44% and 57%, over the course of
the last decade based upon an analysis of primary data studies (Madhani,
Tompkins, Jack, & Fisher, 2014). However, these empirical studies mostly
rely upon small cross-sectional samples that sampled women from low and
middle socioeconomic urban communities (Madhani et al., 2014). The num-
ber of registered cases of VAW provides another facet of analyzing these data
but this may be severely underreported where registered cases are those for
which an FIR or First Investigation Report has been lodged with the police.
The prevalence rate of reported/registered cases of VAW in Punjab stood
approximately at 7,100 cases per 100,000 population.
The highest prevalence rate of VAW in Pakistan was in Rahim Yar Khan
14 registered cases per 100,000 population and the lowest prevalence rate
was in Narowal, 1.67 cases per 100,000 population. Actual cases of violence
may be significantly higher than the registered cases of violence as violence,
particularly against women, goes unreported. The categories of violence per-
petrated against women could be classified as acid burning, beating, custo-
dial rape, gang rape, honor killing, incest, murder, rape, stove burning, wani
(a traditional practice whereby the accused man and woman are sentenced to
Khalid and Choudhry 3

death by a tribal court), and other forms of violence. Such severe forms of
VAW and its implications for their mental and physical health necessitate
research and policy prescription to circumvent this significant socioeconomic
issue. There are quite a few studies which focus on different forms of domes-
tic violence in Pakistan (Manzoor, Rahman, & Bano, 2013; Ali, & Gavino,
2008). But an empirical analysis of spousal violence and its determinants for
Pakistan is missing from the literature. This study will fill this gap.
First, this article empirically investigates the determinants of spousal vio-
lence in Pakistan; second, this article contributes to the existing literature by
analyzing whether women’s access to economic resources acts as a protective
factor or risk factor for violence against them by using two indicators, namely,
(a) whether she earns in cash and/or in-kind, and (b) whether she owns prop-
erty or not; and third, based upon the findings of our analysis, this article
presents policy recommendations. This is a descriptive/observational study
that determines association between violence and economic empowerment of
women in Pakistan.

Literature Review
Bargaining theory models suggest that women’s access to economic
resources increases their bargaining power, and reduces violence against
them (Lenze & Klasen, 2017). Women’s bargaining power within a relation-
ship and IPV against them has also been studied in literature such as by
Oduro, Deere, and Catanzarite (2015) when they compare the value of a
woman’s total assets with those of her partner to proxy for her bargaining
power. Their results reveal that higher women’s bargaining power (proxied
by her greater share of partner wealth) is significantly associated with lower
odds of physical violence against them in Ecuador and emotional violence in
Ghana (Oduro et al., 2015).
Women’s bargaining power is also affected by partner or spouse’s control-
ling behavior that subject them to economic abuse, where economic abuse is
defined as behaviors that, “control a woman’s ability to acquire, use and
maintain economic resources, thus threatening their economic security and
potential for self-sufficiency (Antai, Antai, & Anthony, 2014).”1 Antai et al.
(2014), study economic abuse against women and utilize four indicators for
this purpose, namely, whether her husband had (a) disallowed her to engage
in legitimate work, (b) controlled her money or forced her to work, (c)
destroyed personal property/pet or threatened to harm pet, and (d) made her
lose her job/source of income because of her husband. Logistic regression
analysis reveals strong positive association between physical IPV and emo-
tional IPV and all four forms of economic abuse (Antai et al., 2014).
4 Journal of Interpersonal Violence 00(0)

Women’s land ownership is another important economic resource that

affects women empowerment initiatives. Women land ownership, either
alone or jointly, has been proven to affect their own health care expenditure,
major household purchases and their ability to visit family and/or relatives
(Mishra & Sam, 2016). In places where women are employed in agriculture,
policies involving land rights equity have the potential to increase women’s
empowerment and, thereby their expenditure on education, health, and nutri-
tion (Mishra & Sam, 2016).
Paradoxical results are also seen whereby women who gain higher bar-
gaining power through their access to economic resources are exposed to
greater violence. This necessitates country specific analysis to come up with
protective factors for VAW (Vyas et al., 2015). For instance, Vyas et al. (2015)
studied the association between women’s access to economic resources and
IPV against them. They found that women who earned money and who
owned a business suffered from a higher risk of IPV, in one of two districts of
Tanzania they analyzed. They concluded that women’s access to economic
resources operate differently in different settings thereby calling for protec-
tive policies in accordance with the local landscape.
In case of post-Soviet countries, women’s higher financial power than
their spouses was associated with greater violence against them in Moldova,
Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan (Ismayilova, 2015).
Women’s acceptance of wife-beating by their partner/spouse is another sig-
nificant factor contributing to violence against them. Country specific analysis
revealed that females in developed countries are less accepting of violence
perpetrated against them by their spouses/partners than in developing coun-
tries (Wang, 2016). A comparison of respondents’ acceptance of wife-beating
in seven countries from 1998 to 2001 reveals that this rate stood at 26% in
Kazakhstan, 56% in Turkey, and 57% in India (Rani & Bonu, 2009). Other
studies found this rate to stand at 90% for women in Uganda in certain circum-
stances, 61.8% among women in a Palestinian refugee camp in Jordan, 53% in
Zimbabwe, 74% in Ethiopia, and 62% in Kenya (Wang, 2016).
Similarly, Vyas and Heise (2016), reveal that higher level of women’s
acceptance of wife-beating, and male unemployment, is associated with
higher risk of partner violence in Tanzania. But higher levels of women in
paid work acts as a protective factor by reducing partner violence against
them (Vyas & Heise, 2016). With regards to female acceptance of wife-beat-
ing, Wang (2016) observes that education reduces risk of justifying wife-
beating. In particular, education lower than secondary was associated with a
risk of justifying wife-beating.
As mentioned above, this study will evaluate the role of these variables
and economic empowerment of women for spousal violence against them in
Pakistan.
Khalid and Choudhry 5

Methods
The Pakistan Demographic and Health Survey (PDHS) 2012 to 2013 was
employed for the purpose of this study. It is the third survey to be conducted
in Pakistan as part of the global DHS program that follows up on the earlier
editions conducted in 1990 to 1991 and 2006 to 2007. The primary objective
of PDHS 2012 to 2013 was to, “provide reliable estimates of key fertility,
family planning, maternal, and child health indicators at the national, provin-
cial, and rural and urban level.”2 A household level survey was conducted to
elicit response on various modules of the survey. A total of 14,000 house-
holds were surveyed through systematic sampling techniques out of which
3,687 household/women were selected for the domestic violence module.
The Woman’s Questionnaire collected information from ever-married women
aged 15 to 49 years on areas including domestic violence. It is the first edition
that includes a section on the domestic violence module.3
Table A1 provides definition for all the variables used in the model. The
dependent variable or outcome variable in this analysis is lifetime emotional
and physical violence experienced by ever-married women in the sample. The
respondent was asked questions as to whether she had ever been humiliated by
her husband, threatened by her husband, and/or insulted by her husband. Their
response was coded as 1 (i.e., they have experienced emotional violence) if
they said yes to any one of these three questions and 0 otherwise.
Questions on physical violence ranged from moderate forms of violence
to extremes form of violence. Moderate forms of violence included questions
on whether she had been “pushed, shaken, or had something thrown at her, or
slapped by her husband.” Severe forms of violence included questions on
whether she had ever been punched, kicked or dragged, strangled or burnt,
threatened with a knife or gun, or had her arm twisted by her husband. Their
response was coded as 1 if she said yes to experiencing any of these forms of
violence in her lifetime and 0 otherwise.
The global DHS questionnaires administered in other countries also
include questions on sexual violence which asked respondents if she had
ever been forced to have sexual intercourse by her intimate partner or
forced to perform any other sexual acts. Keeping in view the sensitivities of
the local landscape, the PDHS did not administer these questions in its sur-
vey. Therefore, the analysis in this study is limited to physical and emo-
tional VAW only.
We used women economic empowerment, demographic characteristics,
poverty, education, spousal education, family history of domestic violence,
and their perception about justification of wife-beating as our explanatory
variables. Detailed description of these variables is presented in Table A2 in
the appendix.
6 Journal of Interpersonal Violence 00(0)

Women’s economic empowerment is measured by her access to economic

resources, which is in turn measured by using two indicators. The first indica-
tor is determined by whether the respondent earns in cash and/or in-kind. The
second indicator is based on whether she owns property or not. During the
survey, respondents were asked whether they owned a house or not and
whether they owned land or not, either alone or jointly. If she said yes to
either one or both of these questions, her response to the respondent owns
property variable was coded as 1 and 0 otherwise.
Provincial level analysis has been conducted to develop a more nuanced
analysis that incorporates socioeconomic differences among regions.
According to the Pakistan Social and Living Standards Measurement (PSLM)
2014 to 2015 survey, Punjab had the highest literacy rate (55%) among
females followed by Sindh (49%), Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (35%), and
Balochistan (25%; PSLM report, 2014-2015).
Sindh was the most urbanized province in 2017 (with 52.02% of the popu-
lation living in urban areas) followed by Punjab (36.71%+ of the population
living in urban areas), Balochistan (27.55% of the population living in urban
areas), and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (18.77% of the population living in urban
areas) as per the provisional Census 2017 results revealed by the Statistics
Division of Government of Pakistan (Press release on provisional summary
results of 6th population and housing census, 2017).
The Household Integrated Economic Survey (HIES), 2013 to 2014 divides
the provincial population according to their welfare by clubbing the poorest
households into the first quintile, followed by households with higher con-
sumption in the second quintile and so on. The results revealed that
Balochistan had the highest percentage of population in the lowest consump-
tion quintile (31%), followed by Sindh (23.83%), Punjab (18.37%), and
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (15.43%). With regards to the highest consumption
quintile, Punjab had the highest proportion of population in the highest con-
sumption quintile (23.37%), followed by Sindh (17.12%), Khyber
Pakhtunkhwa (16.46%) and, Balochistan (7.65%; HIES, 2013-2014).
Logistic regression was employed to study the association between wom-
en’s access to economic resources and lifetime emotional and physical vio-
lence against her. This model could be estimated by,
 ∏ 
log it (Y ) = natural log(odds ) = ln   = α + βX
 1− ∏ 
∏ = Pr obability (Y = outcomeof int erest | X = x, aspecificvalueofX )
eα +βx
=
1 + eα +βx
Khalid and Choudhry 7

The baseline model specification is presented below:

EmotionalViolence = α1 + β1 ( PersonalVariables )
+β2 ( EconomicEmpowermentVariables )
+β3 ( FamilyRiskFactors ) + ε
PhysicalViolence = α1 + β1 ( PersonalVariables )
+β2 ( EconomicEmpowermentVariables )
+β3 ( FamilyRiskFactors ) + ε

Where Personal Variables include sociodemographic characteristics (house-

hold size, rural urban residence) and socioeconomic characteristics (poverty,
respondent’s secondary education, and husband’s secondary education).
Economic Empowerment Variables include whether the respondent earns in
cash and/or in-kind and whether the respondent owns property. Family Risk
Factors include whether the respondents father used to beat her mother or not,
her husband’s alcohol consumption and respondent’s acceptance of wife-
beating. ε is independently and identically normally distributed error terms
for all individuals with zero mean and variance σ2.

Results
Table 1 presents the descriptive/demographic statistics of the variables stud-
ies in this investigation. Rates of emotional and physical violence were found
to be 32.3% and 26.8%, respectively. Although these rates are not as high as
those reported in other countries, this may be because violence cases are gen-
erally underreported in Pakistan. Totally, 26.7% of the respondents were
earning in cash and/or in-kind and 12.8% of the respondents said that they
owned property (either a house or land) alone or jointly.
The average age of the respondents interviewed was 32.84 years in
Pakistan. Around 18.5% of the respondents were living in Poverty, 18.8%
of the respondents had completed secondary education and 34.8% of the
Respondents’ husbands had secondary education. Totally, 20.7% of the
respondents said that their fathers used to beat their mothers. 33.47% of
the respondents justified their husbands in beating them because of vari-
ous reasons. Correlation matrix among dependent and explanatory vari-
ables is presented in the Table A3 in the appendix. It reflects that
multicollinearity is not a potential issue in our explanatory variables. We
have used variance inflation factor test which suggest absence of any
harmful correlation.
8 Journal of Interpersonal Violence 00(0)

Table 1.  Descriptive Statistics of Women Interviewed in the Domestic Violence

Module.

Variables Number/Percentage
Emotional violence 32.3%
Physical violence 26.8%
Age of respondent 32.844
Household size 8.234
Urban residence 33.2%
Poverty 18.5%
Respondent’s secondary education 18.8%
Husband’s econdary education 34.8%
Father beat mother 20.7%
Husband’s alcohol use 5.37%
Respondent’s acceptance of wife-beating 33.47%
Respondent earns in cash and/or in-kind 26.7%
Respondent owns property 12.8%
Community poverty 7.4%
Community acceptance of wife-beating 42.2%
N = 3,347

More than two fifth of women in Pakistan believed that their husbands were
justified in beating them because of one of five reasons. These five reasons
included factors such as if she went out without telling him, if she neglected the
children, if she argued with her husband, if she refused to have sex with her
husband, and if she burnt the food. A province-wise breakup of this number
reveals that the highest number of females who said that their husband was
justified in beating them were in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (almost 75%) followed
by Baluchistan (almost 50%) and Sindh (38%) and Punjab (34%).
Women in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa had the highest acceptance that their hus-
band was justified in beating them in each of the five cases, followed by
women in Baluchistan, Sindh, and then Punjab. The highest number of
females, in all four provinces, believed that their husband was justified in
beating them if she argued with him. This was followed by the highest accep-
tance in case she neglected the children and if she went out of the house
without informing him. This reflects the traditional gender roles and expecta-
tions prevalent in society particularly in Baluchistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
provinces (see Figure 1).
Table 2 reports the results of the logistic regression analysis with physical
violence as dependent variable. The coefficient values are odd ratios. First
column presents results for Pakistan and next four columns are for Punjab,
Khalid and Choudhry 9

RESPONDENT JUSTIFIES WIFE BEATING

74.49%

49.50%
34.38% 38.04%

Punjab Sindh KP Baluchistan

Figure 1.  Respondent’s acceptance of wife-beating by her husband.

Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and Balochistan. Robust standard errors are

reported to account for heteroscedasticity as well as to account for the multi-
stage sampling design of the DHS questionnaire.
The results indicate that women who earn in cash and/or in-kind faced a
1.49 times higher risk of physical violence from their spouses. Women with
economic empowerment are more victim of physical violence in Punjab and
Sindh (see Columns 2 and 3 in Table A2). Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and
Balochistan results reflect that likelihood of physical VAW increases with
economic empowerment however, results are statistically insignificant. The
second indicator of whether the respondent owns property or not came out to
be significant only for overall sample.
Larger household size or family size made respondents less vulnerable to
both emotional and physical violence perhaps because of the brokering role
played by joint families. Poverty was not a significant predictor of physical
violence but in case of emotional violence the results indicated that respon-
dents in the lowest income quintile were at less risk of emotional violence
than those in higher income quintiles.
Respondent’s secondary education significantly reduced the odds of phys-
ical (0.499) violence against them. Husband’s secondary education also acted
as a protective factor reducing the odds of physical (0.760) violence against
them.
A history of violence in the family whereby the respondent witnessed her
father beating her mother was associated with significantly higher odds of
violence. Women experienced the highest odds of physical violence (5.116)
10 Journal of Interpersonal Violence 00(0)

Table 2.  Determinants of Physical Violence Against Women in Pakistan and at

Provincial Level.
Overall Punjab Sindh KPK Balochistan

Physical Violence /bSE /bSE /bSE /bSE /bSE

Household size 0.956*** 0.927*** 0.991 0.972 0.971

0.013 0.022 0.025 0.028 0.021
Rural urban residence 1.017 1.251 1.294 0.735 0.985
0.138 0.26 0.42 0.175 0.31
Poverty 0.885 0.904 1.313 0.449** 1.174
0.138 0.265 0.41 0.16 0.435
Respondent secondary 0.499*** 0.461*** 0.634 0.551 0.543
education 0.092 0.129 0.23 0.224 0.293
Husband’s secondary 0.760** 0.774 0.731 0.570** 1.105
education 0.1 0.169 0.212 0.137 0.38
Father beat mother 5.116*** 4.710*** 3.222*** 5.478*** 3.905***
0.66 1.009 0.788 1.306 1.222
Husband’s alcohol use 3.685*** 10.651*** 1.149 2.390*** 4.692**
0.777 4.722 0.575 0.706 3.49
Respondent justifies 1.519*** 1.442* 0.896 1.591* 2.342***
wife-beating 0.184 0.271 0.212 0.405 0.697
Cash and in-kind 1.492*** 1.763*** 2.085*** 1.447 1.821
0.203 0.359 0.478 0.547 0.666
Owns property 1.345* 1.114 0.448 1.117 0.781
0.204 0.312 0.239 0.276 0.454
Constant 0.276*** 0.290*** 0.162*** 0.545 0.318**
0.046 0.073 0.065 0.203 0.155
Observations 3,347 1348 841 680 478
Pseudo R2 .147 .147 .092 .192 .152
Log-likelihood –1812.176*** –994.165*** –377.855*** –283.010*** –90.520***
Chi-squared 313.851*** 129.255*** 54.466*** 117.793*** 40.749***

Note. Robust standard errors are reported below the coefficients.

KPK = Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
*significance at 10% level. **significance at 5% level. ***significance at 1% level.

if they had experienced a history of violence in the family. This result also
holds for all four provinces. Husband’s alcohol use also increased the odds of
physical violence (3.685) against women. Respondents believing that their
husbands were justified in beating them were also associated with higher
odds of physical violence (1.519). Results at provincial level also confirm
this relationship and are statistically significant except for Sindh.
Table 3 presents empirical results for emotional VAW overall and at pro-
vincial level. Findings are quite similar to physical violence whereby fam-
ily history of violence, women earning in-cash/kind, husband alcohol use,
and women justification of wife-beating increases the odds for emotional
violence.
Khalid and Choudhry 11

Table 3.  Determinants of Emotional Violence Against Women in Pakistan and at

Provincial Level.
Pakistan Punjab Sindh KPK Balochistan

Emotional Violence /bSE /bSE /bSE /bSE /bSE

Household size 0.958*** 0.947*** 0.96 0.991 0.993

0.013 0.02 0.029 0.031 0.023
Rural urban residence 0.812* 1.014 1.294 0.685* 0.616
0.103 0.177 0.424 0.148 0.201
Poverty 0.722** 1.083 0.96 0.661 2.233**
0.108 0.283 0.307 0.227 0.816
Respondent secondary 0.594*** 0.506*** 0.701 0.537* 2.963**
education 0.098 0.11 0.272 0.191 1.602
Husband’s secondary 0.737** 0.875 0.622 0.549** 0.893
education 0.093 0.158 0.201 0.129 0.328
Father beat mother 2.798*** 2.158*** 2.715*** 3.130*** 10.639***
0.351 0.432 0.758 0.722 3.481
Husband’s alcohol use 2.918*** 6.126*** 1.69 2.663*** 2.368
0.59 2.587 0.821 0.8 1.578
Respondent justifies 1.359*** 1.368* 1.112 1.292 2.600***
wife-beating 0.156 0.222 0.287 0.317 0.785
Cash and in-kind 1.244* 1.422** 1.629** 1.288 2.154**
0.159 0.25 0.397 0.457 0.755
Owns property 1.148 1.844** 0.731 0.576** 1.472
0.174 0.497 0.342 0.138 0.976
Constant 0.549*** 0.601** 0.165*** 0.76 0.159***
0.084 0.128 0.071 0.293 0.076
Observations 3,347 1348 841 680 478
Pseudo R2 .082 .071 .061 .154 .244
Log-likelilihood –2109.586*** –1293.680*** –323.510*** –295.455*** –82.275***
Chi-squared 193.818*** 79.037*** 42.258*** 94.020*** 77.271***

Note. Robust standard errors are reported below the coefficients.

KPK = Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
*significance at 10% level. **significance at 5% level. ***significance at 1% level.

Women earning in cash and kind lead to increase in odds of emotional

violence against them. This finding holds for overall sample as well as at the
provincial level. An interesting finding is that if women own property, it leads
to increase in likelihood of emotional violence against them in Punjab and
decrease in emotional violence against them in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
Respondent education (in all provinces except for Sindh), her spouse’s
education (except for Punjab and Sindh), and family size (in Punjab) reduces
the likelihood of emotional violence against them. Balochistan results show
that poverty and respondent’s education increases the likelihood of emotional
violence against them. This may be due to significant decline in number of
observations.
12 Journal of Interpersonal Violence 00(0)

Sensitivity Analysis and Robustness

In order to check the robustness of the results, a sensitivity analysis was also
conducted on the physical violence model. Table A2 reports the results of
sensitivity analysis on physical violence. The baseline consisted of all vari-
ables that came out to be significant from Table 2. Additional variables
included the respondent’s rural urban residence, poverty, and whether she
owns property or not which were added one variable at a time to the baseline
model. The added variables came out to be insignificant (see Columns 2, 3,
and 4 in Table A2). However, the respondent’s ownership of property
increased the odds of violence against her (1.355) and the results were sig-
nificant. Our results remain the same which reconfirms the robustness of our
findings. In the second sensitivity test, we do the same exercise by changing
our dependent variable to emotional VAW. Results are presented in Table A3
in the appendix. Our findings remain the same which ensures the credibility
and reliability of our findings.

Discussion
This article explores the association between woman’s access to economic
resources and spousal violence against them. The results suggest that respon-
dent’s secondary education and her husband secondary education act as sig-
nificant protective factors for violence against them. An interaction between
respondents’ level of education (no education, primary, middle, secondary,
and higher level) and respondents who earn in cash and/or in-kind was dem-
onstrated. There was a significant negative correlation between respondents
who earn in cash and/or in-kind and have secondary and higher level educa-
tion, with physical and emotional VAW. This implies that earning in cash may
act as a protective factor for women who have secondary or higher level
education.
Girls who witness a history of violence in the family, whereby their
fathers used to beat their mothers, and who say that their husband is justified
in beating them because of one of five reasons are more prone to land into
abusive relationships themselves. Victims blaming themselves for the vio-
lence perpetrated against them only encourages the abuser and continues a
vicious circle of violence. Therefore, it may be advisable to initiate counsel-
ing and training programs along with women empowerment initiatives to
change the belief systems of victims. Examples of such interventions can be
found around the world. The Intervention for Aids and Gender Equity
(IMAGE) program, for instance, combined a microfinance program with
gender and HIV training (Pronyk et al., 2006; Vyas et al., 2015). A cluster
Khalid and Choudhry 13

randomized trial was conducted in the Limpopo province of South Africa

which combined these two initiatives (Pronyk et al., 2006; Vyas et al., 2015).
The program showed a 55% reduction in physical or sexual partner violence
while attributing further reductions to the gender training program rather
than the microfinance program (Vyas et al., 2015).

Limitations and Future Research

An important limitation of this study is that violence is underreported because
traditional cultural and gender norms prevent women from opening up to
outsiders about their spousal relationships. Hence, any results that may be
drawn from this study may be biased downward.
Another potential limitation of this study is that it does not contain data on
the income of women or the size of their landholding which makes it difficult
to draw a line as to how much women need to earn to be truly empowered.
Also, it does not bifurcate women according to their employment in formal/
informal setup and the implementation of labor laws in their workplace as
there is a possibility that women who experience abusive relationships at the
workplace also suffer from abuse/violence at home. Future research can
bridge this gap by accounting for the type of work done by women and their
experience of physical and emotional violence and come up with policy rec-
ommendations accordingly. Future research can also explore the possibility
of conducting Randomized Control Trial (RCT) on these women empower-
ment initiatives with and without gender dialogue groups.
Lifetime prevalence of abuse may change over time as economic status of
the respondent changes over time. This is another limitation of the abuse
assessed in this study.

Conclusion
This study describes the association between women’s access to economic
resources and spousal emotional and physical violence against them by using
the PDHS 2012 to 2013 and employing logistic regression analysis. The
results indicate that women who earn in cash and/or in-kind suffer from
greater risk of spousal physical violence while women and their husband’s
secondary education act as significant protective factors for violence against
them. Females who experience a history of violence in the family and who
say that their husbands are justified in beating them suffer from higher odds
of violence. The analysis highlights the importance of increasing the level of
education among boys and girls and combining gender dialogue/counseling
groups along with women empowerment initiatives to lessen spousal VAW.
14 Journal of Interpersonal Violence 00(0)

The policy implications of our findings are to increase the level of education
among both genders to change the mind-set through targeted interventions
that reduce VAW in Pakistan.

Authors’ Note
Misbah Tanveer Choudhry is now affiliated with Centre for Research on Economic
Empowerment of South Asian Women, UK.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publi-
cation of this article.

Notes
1. punjablaws.gov.pk/laws/2634.html
2. https://www.nips.org.pk/abstract_files/PDHS%20Final%20Report%20as%20
of%20Jan%2022-2014.pdf
3. PDHS 2012 to 2013 employed a two-stage stratified sample design. The sam-
pling universe consisted of all urban and rural areas in all four provinces of
Pakistan. Four types of Questionnaire were administered as part of PDHS 2012
to 2013, namely, Household Questionnaire, Women’s Questionnaire, Men’s’
Questionnaire, and Community Questionnaire. The Women’s Questionnaire
was collected from ever-married women of ages between 15 and 49 years
and included a module on Domestic Violence. The domestic violence module
was only administered in households that were selected for the men’s survey.
Interviewers/enumerators were given special training before the implementation
of this module that focused on building rapport with the respondent, ensuring
privacy, and on asking sensitive questions. Furthermore, in keeping with World
Health Organization’s (WHO) ethical and safety recommendations only one
woman per household was administered the domestic violence module to ensure
confidentiality. A total of 3,743 women were eligible for the module, but only
3,687 were successfully interviewed. The Woman’s Questionnaire administered
to ever-married women of ages between 15 and 49 years collected information
on their sociodemographic and socioeconomic characteristics, woman’s work
and decision making, husband’s background characteristics, reproductive his-
tory and family planning preferences, as well as domestic violence (Pakistan
Demographic and Health Survey report, 2012-2013).

Supplemental Material
Supplemental material for this article is available online.
Khalid and Choudhry 15

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Author Biographies
Javeria Khalid holds an MSC Economics and an MBA from the Lahore University
of Management Sciences (LUMS). Her research interests include violence and eco-
nomic empowerment of women in Pakistan. She had been serving as an assistant
research fellow at the Punjab Economic Research Institute.
Misbah Tanveer Choudhry holds a PhD in Development Economics from University
of Groningen, the Netherlands. Dr. Choudhry currently serves as the director of
Centre for Research on Economic Empowerment of South Asian Women
(CREESAW), UK. Prior to this, she has been associated with Lahore University of
Management Sciences, Pakistan. Her research has been published in high-quality
journals like The European Journal of Development Review, International Journal of
Manpower, Applied Economics and Economic Systems.