Public Work and Private Violence

In this paper, we study the effect on intimate partner violence of a large public work programme in India that explicitly encourages female participation (MGNREGA). Based on detailed administrative data, we show that the work programme leads to more violence against women. We show that the effect is caused by female employment, and argue that it can be explained by a ‘male backlash’ mechanism, where husbands exercise violence to regain power within marriage.