Military Conscription, Sexist Attitudes and Intimate Partner Violence

Abstract

We provide empirical evidence on the long‐term causal impact of military conscription on sexist attitudes and intimate partner violence. To address potential endogeneity, we exploit the conscription draft lottery in Argentina. We combine the draft administrative data with self‐reported survey data. We find that conscription causes men to adopt more sexist attitudes in dimensions such as justification of sexism and violence, sexual machismo, negative attitude towards homosexuality, old‐fashioned sexism, and hostile sexism. Conscription also causes more engagement in intimate partner violence, as measured by self‐reported non‐physical abuse and physical violence.