Reducing Intimate Partner Violence Through Mass Media: The Roles of Norms, Mental Resilience, and Income

Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) affects 27% of women globally (Sardinha et al., 2022). It drives cognitive impairment, suicidal behavior, and gynecological disorders, and reduces available household earnings through healthcare costs and lost productivity (Ellsberg et al., 2008). These burdens fall disproportionately on low-income women, who face greater exposure and fewer means to cope (Giacomi et al., 2023). Yet, despite growing recognition of IPV as a public health crisis with important distributional consequences, scalable, cost-effective interventions remain elusive (Sheppard et al., 2024).

We provide new causal evidence on the mechanisms driving IPV as well as the relationship between IPV and income. We propose a conceptual framework in which men use IPV in response to perceived gender norm transgressions either strategically (cold-state) to assert control and protect their self-esteem or reputation, or impulsively (hot-state) due to poor emotional regulation. Poverty may exacerbate both by eroding men's self-esteem, reputation, and mental resilience (BDHS, 2017).

We test this theory through a clustered randomized controlled trial with 8,800 men in 440 rural villages in Bangladesh. We evaluate two interventions: (1) educational soap operas, one challenging IPV-justifying norms, the other promoting emotional regulation and non-violent conflict resolution‚ produced by Bangladeshi media company Think Art Limited; and (2) a cash-for-work program providing short-term employment and income support (Hussam et al., 2021). We randomly vary whether the soap opera is shown privately to men at home or publicly in a community setting.