Countries where Women Have more Positive Interactions with Economic Decisions and Legal Rights Have Lower Homicide Rates: an Exploratory Study

Abstract

Women’s struggle for equal legal rights, which is a critical component of their own economic growth, has always been a pressing social and human rights issue. While gains have been made for some women, important variability remains not only within nations but also across nations. How this accessibility manifests itself in social outcomes however, has received little attention. One important outcome that is of significant concern throughout the world is homicide. In this paper, we link women’s rights to overall homicide rates. We use cross-national data for almost two hundred countries spanning the world’s regions to investigate whether countries where women experience more gender discrimination in economic and family decisions have higher homicide rates. Using finite mixture modeling, we find significant variation in a discrimination index and that countries grouped by their level of discrimination experience significantly different overall homicide rates. In countries with the least discrimination, we found the lowest overall average homicide rate.