When Development Is Not Enough: Structural Change, Conflict and Gendered Insecurity

Abstract

Despite two decades of rapid global economic growth and social modernisation, including increases in gender equity, levels of violence against women remain stubbornly high. Moving beyond conventional liberal views, a growing literature has identified how structural change and conflict associated with economic development can exacerbate women’s physical insecurity. We examine the relationship between development patterns and variation in the Physical Security of Women index—the best available cross-national indicator—to fill the gap in emerging ethnographic, case and survey-based accounts with systematic cross-country assessment. We find that, after controlling for standard explanatory variables, income inequality, urban crowding, corruption, political violence, autocracy and unequal representation of women in politics are associated with more physical insecurity, confirming the relevance of structural change and conflict approaches to development. Correcting the conventional wisdom, high national incomes are associated with greater security for women only if they are well distributed, and the relationship with female labour force participation weakens as women’s work rises. These relationships are robust to the year in which they are measured, and to the introduction of region and time fixed effects. We also demonstrate that gender-based violence has different correlates than generic insecurity.

Acknowledgements

We thank Deborah Sutton and Caitlin Vejby for extensive research assistance on earlier versions of this study, Rachael Drew, Natasha Bennett and Gokh Alshaif for editing assistance, and Amit Ahuja for useful conceptual suggestions.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

About the Authors

Alison Brysk is the Mellichamp Professor of Global Governance at the University of California Santa Barbara. She is the author or editor of 11 published volumes on international human rights, and a forthcoming book: Violence against Women: Human Rights and the Dynamics of Change in the BRICS and Beyond. She is the recipient of the International Studies Association 2015 Distinguished Scholar Award in Human Rights, a 2014 Woodrow Wilson Fellow, and Fulbright Fellowships in India and Canada.

Aashish Mehta is an Associate Professor in the University of California Santa Barbara’s Global Studies department. A development economist who has previously served at the Asian Development Bank, his primary expertise is in the connections between education, employment, inequality, globalisation and changes in the structure of national economies. His other publications cover diverse topics, including corruption, power sector restructuring, food subsidies, caste discrimination and commodity price management.

Notes

1. Matthias Nowak, “Femicide: A Global Problem”, Small Arms Survey, Research Note No. 14 (2012); United Nations’ Office of Drugs and Crime, “Global Study on Homicide” (2011), available: <https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/statistics/crime/global-study-on-homicide-2011.html> (accessed July 2015).

2. See K.M. Devries et al., “The Global Prevalence of Intimate Partner Violence against Women”, Science Magazine, Vol. 340 (2013), pp. 1527–1528. Also, in a 2010 review of data from 141 studies in 81 countries, World Health Organization [“Global and Regional Estimates of Violence Against Women” (2013), available: <http://www.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/85239/1/9789241564625_eng.pdf?ua=1> (accessed July 2015)] finds that 30% of women over 15 have experienced physical and/or sexual violence by an intimate partner. New studies of the global prevalence of rape estimate that in 2010, 7.2% of women worldwide had experienced non-partner sexual violence—over 240 million women (Naeemah Abrahams et al., “Worldwide Prevalence of Non-Partner Sexual Violence: A Systematic Review”, The Lancet, Vol. 383 (2014), pp. 1648–1654).

3. UN Women, “Summary Report: The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action Turns 20” (2015) (E/CN.6/2015/3), available: http://www.unwomen.org/en/digital-library/publications/2015/02/beijing-synthesis-report (accessed 2 February 2017).

4. Agencia Patricia Galvao, available: <http://www.agenciapatriciagalvao.org.br.> (accessed October 2014).

5. US Department of State, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, “Country Report on Human Rights Practices” (2013), p. 40, available: <http://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/humanrightsreport/> (accessed May 2015).

6. Ibid. Even though reporting has improved along with development and globalisation, the following factors suggest some underlying genuine trend of growing violence: the diversity of locations and forms of violence reported, increases in hard indicators such as fatalities, supplements to the most under-reported national statistics and crime reports by more representative grassroots documentation, international development case studies, and health surveys. We discuss below the PSOW incorporation and weighting of reporting barriers in the composite index.

7. The use of this composite indicator is justified as follows. Because the rates at which violence against women of all forms is reported and collated into official statistics vary enormously across countries, the WomanStats database triangulates data from international, government and non-governmental data sources, and uses this information to assign each country to the PSOW scale using a rigorous system of peer review to ensure inter-coder reliability. While better data may become available in future, this is the best available indicator of women’s physical insecurity in practice. Our use of the PSOW indicator of physical security in practice distinguishes our work from previous studies utilising more general gender equity measures such as the gender equity index, or measures of gendered legal rights. See Mary Caprioli et al., “The WomanStats Project Database: Advancing an Empirical Research Agenda”, Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 46, No. 6 (2009), pp. 1–13.

8. Allison Brysk, Human Rights and Private Wrongs (New York: Routledge, 2005).

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20. Suppressive responses to the mobilising challenges that rise with modernisation are argued to cause “more murder in the middle”. See Helen Fein, “More Murder in the Middle: Life-Integrity Violations and Democracy in the World, 1987”, Human Rights Quarterly, Vol. 17, No. 1 (1995), pp. 170–191.

21. Cynthia Enloe, Bananas, Beaches, and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2014); J. Ann Tickner, Gendering World Politics: Issues and Approaches in the Post-Cold War Era (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2001); Aili Mari Tripp, Myra Marx Ferree and Christina Ewig (eds.), Gender, Violence, and Human Security: Critical Feminist Perspectives (New York, NY: New York University Press, 2013); Julie Peters and Andrea Wolper (eds.), Women’s Rights, Human Rights: International Feminist Perspectives (New York: Routledge, 1994); Jan Jindy Pettman, Worlding Women: A Feminist International Politics (London: Routledge, 1996); Georgina Waylen, “Gender, Feminism and Political Economy”, New Political Economy, Vol. 2, No. 2 (1997), pp. 205–220.

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24. Nowak, op. cit.

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26. United Nations’ Office of Drugs and Crime, op. cit., p. 10.

27. Richard Florida, “What the Most Violent Nations in the World Have in Common”, The Atlantic (February 2014), available: <www.theatlanticcities.com/politics/2014/02/what-most-violent-nations-world-have-common/6015> (accessed May 2015).

28. Ruth Rubio-Marín and Dorthy Estrada-Tranck, “Violence against Women, Human Security, and Human Rights of Women and Girls: Reinforced Obligations in the Context of Structural Vulnerability”, in Aili Mari Tripp, Myra Marx Ferree and Christina Ewig (eds.), Gender, Violence, and Human Security: Critical Feminist Perspectives (New York: New York University Press, 2013), pp. 238–259.

29. Sylvia Chant, “Cities Through a ‘Gender Lens’: A Golden ‘Urban Age’ for Women in the Global South”, Environment and Urbanization, Vol. 25, No. 1 (2013), pp. 9–29; Sylvia Chant and Kerwin Datu, “Urban Prosperity Doesn’t Automatically Mean Gender Equality”, The Global Urbanist (September 2011), available: <http://globalurbanist.com/2011/09/27/urban-prosperity-doesnt-automatically-mean-gender-equality> (accessed May 2015).

30. UN-Habitat, “State of Women in Cities: Gender and the Prosperity of Cities. Nairobi” (2012/2013), available: <http://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/745habitat.pdf> (accessed May 2015).

31. Cathy Mcllwaine, “Urbanization and Gender-Based Violence: Exploring the Paradoxes in the Global South”, Environment and Urbanization, Vol. 25, No. 1 (2013), pp. 65–79.

32. Geetanjali Gangoli and Nicole Westmarland (eds.), International Approaches to Rape (Bristol, UK: Policy Press, 2011).

33. See Morgan Campbell, “Navigating the Global City: Gender, Mobility, and the Case of Bangalore’s IT Economy”, in Allison Garland (ed.), Innovation in Urban Development: Incremental Housing, Big Data, and Gender (Washington, DC: Wilson Center/USAID, 2013); and Fernando Priyanthi and Gina Porter, Balancing the Load: Women, Gender and Transport (London: Zed Books, 2002).

34. Terrence McCoy, “‘Nobody Deserves to be Raped’ Campaign Responds to Shocking Brazilian Survey”, The Washington Post, 3 April 2014, available: <https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/04/03/i-dont-deserve-to-be-raped-campaign-responds-to-shocking-brazilian-survey/?utm_term=.deec451e5440> (accessed May 2015).

35. Teresa Inchâustegui Romero, Maria de la Paz Lopez Barajas and Carlos Echarri, “Violencia Feminicida en Mexico, 1985–2010”, ONU Mujeros (2013), available: <http://www.unwomen.org/es/digital-library/publications/2013/2/violence-and-femicide-in-mexico-characteristics-trends-and-new-expressions-in-the-states-of-mexico> (accessed May 2015); “Informe sobre Derechos Humanos y Conflictividad en Centroamérica 2013–2014”, available: <http://www.fespad.org.sv/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Dddhh20141.pdf> (accessed January 2016);

US Department of State, op. cit.

36. True, op. cit.

37. United Nations’ Office of Drugs and Crime, op. cit.

38. World Bank, “2012 World Development Report on Gender Equality and Development” (2012), available: <http://econ.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/EXTDEC/EXTRESEARCH/EXTWDRS/EXTWDR2012/0,,menuPK:7778074~pagePK:7778278~piPK:7778320~theSitePK:7778063~contentMDK:22851055,00.html> (accessed May 2015).

39. Rachael Jewkes, Emma Fulu, Tim Roselli and Claudia Garcia-Morenoon, “Prevalence of and Factors Associated with Non-Partner Rape Perpetration: Findings from the UN Multi-Country Cross-Sectional Study on Men and Violence in Asia and the Pacific”, The Lancet Global Health, Vol. 1, No. 4 (2013), pp. e208–e218.

40. Ibid.

41. Helen Moffett, “Sexual Violence, Civil Society, and the New Constitution”, in Hannah Britton, Jennifer Fish and Sheila Meintjes (eds.), Women’s Activism in South Africa: Working across Divides (Scottsville, South Africa: University of KwaZulu Natal Press, 2009), p. 166.

42. Kate Wood, “Contextualizing Group Rape in Post-Apartheid South Africa”, Culture, Health and Sexuality, Vol. 7, No. 4 (2005), pp. 303–317.

43. John Simister, Gender-Based Violence: Causes and Remedies (Hauppauge, NY: Nova Science Publishers, 2012); Alessandra Guedes, Claudia Garcia-Moreno and Sarah Bott, “Violencia contra las mujeres en Latinoamerica y el Caribe”, Foreign Affairs Latinoamerica, Vol. 14, No. 1 (2014), pp. 4–48.

44. World Bank, op. cit.

45. Abigail Weitzman, “Intimate Partner Violence in India”, Population and Development Review, Vol. 40, No. 1 (2014), p. 65.

46. Mosfequr Rahman, Aminul Hoque and Satoru Makinoda, “Intimate Partner Violence against Women: Is Women Empowerment a Reducing Factor? A Study from a National Bangladeshi Sample”, Journal of Family Violence, Vol. 26, No. 5 (2011), p. 411.

47. As quoted in Munoz Boudet, Ana Maria, Patti Petesch, Carolyn Turk and Angelica Thumala, On Norms and Agency: Conversations about Gender Equality with Women and Men in 20 Countries (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2013), p. 73. Emphasis added.

48. Peterson, op. cit.

49. Neil Engelhart, “State Capacity, State Failure, and Human Rights”, Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 46, No. 2 (2009), pp. 163–180.

50. Dara Kay Cohen and Ragnhild Nordas, “Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict: Introducing the SVAC Dataset, 1989–2009”, Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 51, No. 3 (2014), pp. 418–428; Elisabeth Wood, “Rape Is Not Inevitable during War”, in Kathleen Kuehnast, Chantal de Jonge Oudraat and Helga Hernes (eds.), Women and War: Power and Protection in the 21st Century (Washington, DC: US Institute for Peace Press, 2013), pp. 37–63. This pattern has been recently documented extensively in Colombia. See ABColombia/Corporacion Sisma Mujer/The US Office on Colombia, “Colombia: Women, Conflict-Related Sexual Violence and the Peace Process” (2013), available: <http://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/ABColombia_Conflict_related_sexual_violence_report.pdf> (accessed July 2015).

51. Christopher K. Butler, Tali Gluch and Neil J. Mitchell, “Security Forces and Sexual Violence: A Cross-National Analysis of a Principal-Agent Argument”, Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 44, No. 6 (2007), pp. 669–687.

52. Ibid., p. 680.

53. Pettman, op. cit., pp. 102–103; Gangoli and Westmarland, op. cit.

54. Amnesty International, “Gender-Based Violence around Tahrir Square”, Amnesty International (February 2013), available: <http://www.amnestyusa.org/research/reports/egypt-gender-based-violence-against-women-around-tahrir-square> (accessed May 2015); International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), “Exposing State Hypocrisy: Sexual Violence by Security Forces in Egypt” (2014), available: <https://www.fidh.org/IMG/pdf/egypt_report.pdf> (accessed May 2015).

55. Lydiah Kemunto Bosire and Gabrielle Lynch, “Kenya’s Search for Truth and Justice: The Role of Civil Society”, International Journal of Transitional Justice, Vol. 8, No. 2 (2014), pp. 1–21.

56. Swati Bhattacharjee, A Unique Crime: Understanding Rape in India (Kolkata: Gangchil: Distributor Doyel, 2008); Anuradha Saibaba Rajesh, “Women in India: Abysmal Protection, Peripheral Rights and Subservient Citizenship”, New England Journal of International and Comparative Law, Vol. 16 (2010), pp. 111–143.

57. Andrew Jacobs, “Taking Feminist Battle to China’s Streets, and Landing in Jail”, New York Times, 5 April 2015, available: <http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/06/world/asia/chinese-womens-rights-activists-fall-afoul-of-officials.html> (accessed July 2015).

58. Caprioli et al., op. cit.

59. Arthur and Clark, op. cit.

60. Rodriguez and Khalil, op. cit.; Kaya and Cook, op. cit.

61. Further details regarding the procedures followed in coding the PSOW are available at <http://womanstats.org/new/codebook/>, under the variable MULTIVAR-SCALE-1.

62. Jagdish Bhagwati, In Defense of Globalization: With a New Afterword (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2007).

63. Kaya and Cook, op. cit.; Stephanie Seguino, “Help or Hindrance? Religion’s Impact on Gender Inequality”, World Development, Vol. 39, No. 8 (2011), pp. 1308–1321. Using percentage of Muslims as a proxy for patriarchy merely attempts to replicate prior studies’ modelling of culture alongside our structural change variables, and does not represent an assertion that Islamic beliefs drive or legitimate violence. For example, see Feryal Cherif, “Culture, Rights, and Norms: Women’s Rights Reform in Muslim Countries”, Journal of Politics, Vol. 72, No. 4 (2010), pp. 1144–1160.

64. GINI coefficients are calculated infrequently in most countries, and are released with a lag. We are therefore forced to use a lagged seven-year average in our 2014 analysis and lagged five-year averages in our 2006 and 2009 analyses.

65. We use 2013 homicide rates, because 2014 rates are not available at the time of writing. Correlations between independent variables and homicide rates in 2006 and 2009 are available on request.

66. The null that homicide rates are independent of the PSOW carries p-values of 0.055, 0.181 and 0.019 in 2013/2014, 2009 and 2006 respectively. This reinforces the idea that the relationship between homicide and the PSOW is fairly weak and certainly inconsistent.

67. Running the regression with the same variables as in column (1), but on the smaller sample available for use in column (2), results in exactly the same patterns of sign and significance as in column (1).

68. Results available on request.