One in three women in the EU-28 countries has experienced physical and/or sexual violence since age 15, with the perpetrator often her (ex-)partner. The consequences of violence against women are devastating not only for the health, productivity, and employment of the women but also for the health and development of their children. Ending gender-based and domestic violence is one of society’s greatest challenges and a top priority of the European Commission as reflected in its Gender Equality Strategy 2020-25. The question is how?

While we know a lot about the factors, costs, and consequences associated with IPV from a wide range of disciplines, including sociology, psychology, social work, public health, and medicine, the evidence on what factors causally mitigate or exacerbate IPV is scarce, especially in high-income countries. Furthermore, most studies focus on groups of women who have either been victimized or are at high risk of victimization.

Combining population-based data from a wide variety of sources (hospital records; police records; face-to-face survey interviews) with quantitative methods drawn from economics, WomEmpower proposes to estimate the causal impact of (1) motherhood, (2) gender norms, and (3) labor market policies targeted to low-income workers on IPV. Crucially, the project will identify the mechanisms driving IPV in the EU, as well as the population subgroups most at risk of victimization. Furthermore, WomEmpower will study how structural inequalities (poverty, immigrant status, race, lack of education/services) in the EU shape the risk of victimization, as well as how women's intersectionalities (racism, adultism, ableism, heteronormativity) impact their risk of victimization.

The project adopts a comprehensive ecological framework that recognizes that there are many factors linked to IPV at the personal, interpersonal, community, and societal levels. The project is interdisciplinary because it tackles a major public health topic using quantitative methods from economics and testing a variety of hypotheses from multiple disciplines including sociology psychology, public health, gender studies, and medicine.

The objective of the project is to produce evidence-based research that will be fundamental to guide effective policymaking that prevents and eradicates domestic violence in the EU.