Violence against women and girls has social and economic impacts

Dr Nata Duvvury, joint leader of the Gender and Public Policy research cluster is leading a new international research project charged with calculating the social and economic costs of violence against women and girls. Her research project aims to demonstrate that the cost of violence is not just to the individual, but that it has a ripple effect on men, the family and community, as violence in society further pulls down an economy’s capacity to recover from crisis, or affects the impact on promoting economic development according to Duvvury. Read Lorna Siggins’ article in The Irish Times for further details.

The 3-year research project funded by the UK’s Department for International Development was launched in February and will give policy-makers ways of estimating the social and economic costs of violence to national economies. The research aims to identify the links between violence against women and girls and the economic impact this violence has on nations at differing stages of development. The research will survey 4,500 women from Ghana, Pakistan and South Sudan – three countries representing fragile, conflict affected and/or low to middle income states. In-depth interviews with survivors of violence will also be conducted. By producing new empirical evidence on the economic and social costs of violence against women and girls, the project will strengthen the argument for resources to implement laws and provide health and social support services that will mobilize communities to shift the social norms that underpin violence against women and girls.

In a previous study led by Dr Duvvury that costed domestic violence against women in Vietnam, the estimated loss of productivity, cost of out-of-pocket expenditures and loss of income for households came to about 3.19% of GDP. The current project will further advance this finding using innovative quantitative and qualitative research methods to capture economic and social costs at individual household, community and national levels.

This ambitious £1.5m GBP project will take a multi-disciplinary approach, involving experts in economics and the across the social sciences. The NUI Galway research team led by Dr Duvvury includes Dr Stacey Scriver (Global Women’s Studies), Dr Srinivas Raghavendra (School of Business and Economics), Sinead Ashe (Global Women’s Studies), and Dr Diarmuid O’Donovan (School of Medicine). The international team led by NUI Galway comprises Ipsos MORI, London, and the International Center for Research on Women, Washington DC.