Gender Inequality, Socioeconomic Development, and Estimated Rates of Intimate Partner Violence Against Women in 118 Countries.

Gender inequality is widely understood to be crucial to explaining the prevalence of intimate partner violence against women (IPVAW). Yet the "civilization thesis" links a decline in violence in general in the Western world to modernization processes/socioeconomic development that began during the Enlightenment. The research presented here asks whether cross-national differences in World Health Organization survey-based estimates of IPVAW rates are more strongly linked to gender inequality than they are to socioeconomic development. Gender Development Index and Gender Gap Index (GGI) measures are used because, unlike other gender inequality measures used in cross-national comparisons, they fully separate gender inequality from women's absolute level of attainment (the latter is strongly linked to socioeconomic development). Findings from linear regression models that controlled for relevant variables indicate that low socioeconomic development (not gender inequality) is key to whether a country has a high estimated IPVAW rate. In all nine models, at least one socioeconomic development variable was a stronger predictor of IPVAW rates than any gender inequality variable. Absolute poverty rates were a consistently significant predictor of IPVAW, while the GGI's educational inequality component was the only significant gender inequality predictor. Hence, the findings highlight the need to eradicate the world's worst material conditions and equalize educational provision.