Women's Police Stations and Intimate Partner Violence : Evidence from Brazil

Although women's police stations have gained popularity as a measure to address intimate partner violence (IPV), there is little quantitative evaluation of their impacts on the incidence of IPV. This paper estimates the effects of women's police stations in Brazil on female homicides, a me...

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Main Authors: Perova, Elizaveta, Reynolds, Sarah Anne
Format: Journal Article
Language:en_US
Published: Elsevier 2017
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/10986/26003
id okr-10986-26003
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spelling okr-10986-260032021-05-25T10:54:40Z Women's Police Stations and Intimate Partner Violence : Evidence from Brazil Perova, Elizaveta Reynolds, Sarah Anne intimate partner violence police stations homicide women's police stations Although women's police stations have gained popularity as a measure to address intimate partner violence (IPV), there is little quantitative evaluation of their impacts on the incidence of IPV. This paper estimates the effects of women's police stations in Brazil on female homicides, a measure of the most severe form of IPV. Given that a high fraction of female deaths among women ages 15–49 years can be attributed to aggression by an intimate partner, female homicides appear the best proxy for severe IPV considering the scarcity of data on IPV in Brazil. We assemble a panel of 2074 municipalities from 2004 to 2009 and apply a difference-in-differences approach using location and timing to estimate the effect of establishing a women's police station on the municipal female homicide rate. Although we do not find a strong association on average, women's police stations appear to be highly effective among young women living in metropolitan areas. Establishing a women's police station in a metropolitan municipality is associated with a reduction in the female homicide rate by 1.23 deaths per 100,000 women ages 15–49 years (approximately a 17 percent reduction in the female homicide rate in metropolitan municipalities). The reduction in the homicide rate of women ages 15 to 24 is even higher: 5.57 deaths per 100,000 women. Better economic opportunities and less traditional social norms in metropolitan areas may explain the heterogeneous impacts of women's police stations. 2017-02-02T23:15:27Z 2017-02-02T23:15:27Z 2017-02 Journal Article Social Science & Medicine 0277-9536 http://hdl.handle.net/10986/26003 en_US CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 IGO http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/igo World Bank Elsevier Publications & Research :: Journal Article Publications & Research Latin America & Caribbean Brazil
repository_type Digital Repository
institution_category Foreign Institution
institution Digital Repositories
building World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection World Bank
language en_US
topic intimate partner violence
police stations
homicide
women's police stations
spellingShingle intimate partner violence
police stations
homicide
women's police stations
Perova, Elizaveta
Reynolds, Sarah Anne
Women's Police Stations and Intimate Partner Violence : Evidence from Brazil
geographic_facet Latin America & Caribbean
Brazil
description Although women's police stations have gained popularity as a measure to address intimate partner violence (IPV), there is little quantitative evaluation of their impacts on the incidence of IPV. This paper estimates the effects of women's police stations in Brazil on female homicides, a measure of the most severe form of IPV. Given that a high fraction of female deaths among women ages 15–49 years can be attributed to aggression by an intimate partner, female homicides appear the best proxy for severe IPV considering the scarcity of data on IPV in Brazil. We assemble a panel of 2074 municipalities from 2004 to 2009 and apply a difference-in-differences approach using location and timing to estimate the effect of establishing a women's police station on the municipal female homicide rate. Although we do not find a strong association on average, women's police stations appear to be highly effective among young women living in metropolitan areas. Establishing a women's police station in a metropolitan municipality is associated with a reduction in the female homicide rate by 1.23 deaths per 100,000 women ages 15–49 years (approximately a 17 percent reduction in the female homicide rate in metropolitan municipalities). The reduction in the homicide rate of women ages 15 to 24 is even higher: 5.57 deaths per 100,000 women. Better economic opportunities and less traditional social norms in metropolitan areas may explain the heterogeneous impacts of women's police stations.
format Journal Article
author Perova, Elizaveta
Reynolds, Sarah Anne
author_facet Perova, Elizaveta
Reynolds, Sarah Anne
author_sort Perova, Elizaveta
title Women's Police Stations and Intimate Partner Violence : Evidence from Brazil
title_short Women's Police Stations and Intimate Partner Violence : Evidence from Brazil
title_full Women's Police Stations and Intimate Partner Violence : Evidence from Brazil
title_fullStr Women's Police Stations and Intimate Partner Violence : Evidence from Brazil
title_full_unstemmed Women's Police Stations and Intimate Partner Violence : Evidence from Brazil
title_sort women's police stations and intimate partner violence : evidence from brazil
publisher Elsevier
publishDate 2017
url http://hdl.handle.net/10986/26003
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