Evidence-VAW is a research project led by Professor Sonia Bhalotra, running from 2021-2026. It is supported by a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant.

Violence against women (VAW) is both a cause of and a manifestation of gender inequality, yet it has drawn significantly less intellectual curiosity from economists than aspects of gender inequality such as the pay gap. VAW generates significant constraints on women’s lives, with spillovers for society, the economy and the next generation. It potentially causes physical and psychological harm, compromises women’s productivity as workers and parents, and distorts the optimal allocation of talent.

In the course of this project, I propose to acquire and generate under-used and unavailable data and to analyse the data using techniques for causal identification with a view to producing a rich tapestry of scientific evidence to guide policy and further scholarship.

It is an important time to do this as there is a growing consensus around prioritising VAW in international policymaking. Creative new strategies are being used in many countries to reduce VAW, but typically without scientific evaluation. The evidence base is thin. This is partly because representative time-varying data on VAW are scarce. Available data are contaminated by under-reporting and endogenous reporting behaviour.

The project will investigate:

• institutional designs that encourage women to report VAW and that deliver justice on VAW
• the role of information and support in inducing behavioural change among men and women
• the likely value of policies addressing proximate causes
• the potential of women’s political mobilisation.

It will include natural experiments and field and lab experiments. In addition to primary field data, it will use longitudinal administrative data. Although focused on women’s rights, it addresses issues on the frontier of economics research, including inequality, productivity, institutional design, political economy, and legislative reform.