Government of Ethiopia's public works and complementary programmes: A mixed-methods study on pathways to reduce intimate partner violence

Meghna Ranganathan,Marjorie Pichon,Melissa Hidrobo,Heleene Tambet,Wastina Sintayehu,Seifu Tadesse,Ana Maria Buller

doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2022.114708

Abstract

There is evidence that cash transfers reduce intimate partner violence (IPV), but less is known about the impacts of public works and complementary programmes on IPV. Using mixed-methods we examined whether and how the Ethiopian government's public works programme (that includes food or cash transfers for seasonal labour) alongside complementary activities that engage women and men affected IPV. We analysed midline data collected in July–October 2019 from a randomised controlled trial (RCT) designed to measure the added impacts of the complementary programming in the Amhara and Oromia regions. Eligible households for this analysis had at least one child aged 0–35 months and a primary female caregiver who was married, and under 50 years-old (n = 2604). A nested qualitative study was conducted with a sub-sample of RCT participants from February–March 2020; data included seven focus group discussions and 58 in-depth interviews. Male partners of women who reported experiencing IPV were purposively sampled. Ordinary Least Squares regression analyses were used to estimate the average treatment effect of the complementary programming, and sub-analyses were conducted on the poorest ten households from each village who received additional livelihood transfers. Qualitative data were analysed using thematic content analysis. We found no impacts of the complementary programming on IPV in the full sample, but some impacts among the poorest sample. Evidence on pathways found that both the public works and complementary programming decreased poverty-related stress and arguments within relationships and increased emotional wellbeing. There were some impacts on women's empowerment from the complementary programming. However, men's reactions to women's empowerment were mixed. There was strong evidence that engaging men in nutrition behaviour change communication contributed to improving gender relations. Our findings indicate that social protection and complementary programmes have the potential to be gender transformative and prevent the drivers of IPV.

Highlights

We structure our results around the research questions we sought to answer: 1) pathways be tween the Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP) and Strengthen PSNP4 Institutions and Resilience (SPIR) activities and Intimate partner violence (IPV), including men’s reactions to women’s empowerment; and 2) the impact of male engagement in gender transformative complementary activities
Given that the quan titative evaluation was only designed to assess the added impacts of SPIR and not the impacts of PSNP, we provide quantitative evidence only for the pathways between the SPIR programme and IPV
This study contributes to the limited literature on the impacts of public works and complementary programmes on IPV

Summary

Introduction

Cash transfers and other social safety net programmes have reached approximately 2.5 billion people in low- and middle-income countries, helping women and the most vulnerable members of society (The World Bank, 2018). These social protection programmes have been designed primarily to reduce poverty and have shown promising impacts on reducing food insecurity (Tiwari et al, 2016) and improving the uptake of health services (Ranganathan and Lagarde, 2012). These programmes have not been designed explicitly to reduce IPV. A more recent meta-analysis of 14 experimental and quasi-experimental cash transfer studies found average decreases in physical/sexual IPV (4 percentage points (pp)), emotional abuse (2 pp) and controlling behaviours (4 pp) (Baranov et al, 2021)

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Results

Discussion

Conclusion