Foreign Aid and Institutional Quality towards Reducing Gender-Based Violence

Abstract

Studies have shown a possible link between women achieving some degree of economic independence through empowerment and a decline in gender-based violence (GBV). However, inadequate funding has been a major challenge in developing economies, while foreign aid has been seen as an alternative funding source. Foreign aid for promoting women’s rights and gender equality is improving in African countries. Yet, according to official statistics, the frequency of GBV in Africa is among the highest in the world. Given this, this paper examines the impact of women’s aid and institutional quality on factors that can reduce GBV using both cross-sectional autoregressive lags to investigate short- and long-run implications and the Panel Vector Correction Model to examine the shock effect of aid on other variables. Also, the mediating role of institutional quality and women’s aid are considered. The metrics used for the factors that reduce GBV are female children out of school, the secondary school gender parity index, the genital mutilation prevalence rate, and the metrics for institutional quality are the rules of law and government effectiveness. The implications from the findings show that enhancing the legal structure is very important in Africa, given the low coefficient values to reduce discrimination against the right to education; more should be done to increase the enrolment of female students through the maximisation of women’s aid in order to achieve the short- and long-term objectives of reducing gender violence. The findings also show that the rule of law significantly aids in the reduction of female genital mutilation in the short and long run; government effectiveness is insignificant. Also, they show that women’s aid also reduces female genital mutilation, albeit at a low rate. The results of this study call for strong enhanced government support and funding to end the practice of female genital mutilation and discrimination against female education in the short and long run.

The Quest for Female Economic Empowerment in Sub-Saharan African Countries: Implications on Gender-Based Violence

“…Women's empowerment, particularly through increasing economic participation and employment, has been shown to be a successful strategy in mitigating GBV (Asaleye and Strydom 2023b;Bashford-Squires et al 2022;Tsai 2022). Economic empowerment grants women financial autonomy and a more substantial role in decision-making processes.…”

“…Economic empowerment has the potential to reshape traditional power dynamics within relationships, thereby reducing the likelihood of violence (Bashford-Squires et al 2022;Tsai 2022). By altering these traditional power imbalances, economic empowerment may contribute to a decrease in the incidence of violence (Asaleye and Strydom 2023b).…”

“…The panel FMOLS method is a reliable single-equation technique to analyse the long-term effect of independent variables on a dependent variable (Asaleye and Strydom 2023a). It is worth mentioning that GBV manifests itself in a variety of ways, including male rape, bisexuality, and transgenderisation; however, this study is limited to economic factors that hinder women's and girls' access to empowerment opportunities in sub-Saharan African countries (Asaleye and Strydom 2023b). In most cases, female learners can be abused, leading to them dropping out of secondary school or forcing them to cater for the family when their parents are engaged in business activities (Das 2023).…”