Does Access to Key Household Resources Help in Reducing Violence against Women

Violence against women is not only widely recognized as a public health problem but also considered to be a severe violation of their fundamental human rights. Women and girls’ vulnerability to both nonpartner violence (NPV) as well as intimate partner violence (IPV) can be exacerbated by lack of access to water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) resources as well as cooking fuel within households. However, the literature has ignored certain aspects of this linkage such as the impact of WASH resources on IPV or the impact of access to cooking fuel on NPV or IPV. We therefore attempt to quantify the impact of each of these key household resources on women’s exposure to NPV when they step out of their homes to access the resources as well as IPV when they are unable to meet their own as well as their families’ WASH and fuel needs. Using data from a large-scale survey (NFHS-4) for India and employing propensity score matching and inverse probability weighted regression adjustment techniques, we find that access to each of the household resources leads to lower physical IPV. Emotional IPV gets reduced with access to cooking fuel and toilets while sexual IPV decreases with provision of cooking fuel. Provision of all three key resources reduces physical NPV but there is no effect on sexual NPV.