The impact of intimate partner violence on women’s labour market outcomes

This paper investigates the impact of intimate partner violence on the participation of women in the labour market and their access to employment in the form of being a wage worker, self-employed or unpaid family worker. To address the possibility of endogeneity, especially due to simultaneity, between intimate partner violence and female labour force participation, we use the history of violence, both of the woman and her partner, as instrumental variables. Our results provide evidence that intimate partner violence is associated with an increased probability of a woman participating in the labour market. Further analysis shows that the rent extraction mechanism is the most likely explanation for the positive relationship.