Abstract
Research has mainly studied women’s empowerment assessing personal (e.g., self-esteem) or relational (e.g., decision-making) empowerment indicators. Women are not isolated individuals; they are embedded in social relationships. This is especially relevant in more collectivist societies. The current research provides a relational perspective on how husbands may hamper women’s empowerment by inflicting intimate partner violence (IPV) assessing women’s self-reported experience. We tested the link between self-esteem and experienced IPV on financial intra-household decision-making power among women entrepreneurs (N = 1,347) in Northern Vietnam, a collectivistic society undergoing economic development. We report two measurement points. As expected, self-esteem (and not IPV) was positively related to more power in intra-household decision-making on small expenditures, which are traditionally taken by women. However, IPV (and not self-esteem) was related to less decision-making power on larger expenditures, traditionally a domain outside women’s power. We test and discuss the directionality of the effects and stress the importance of considering women’s close relationship when investigating signs of women’s empowerment.
Original language | English |
---|---|
Article number | e12348 |
Pages (from-to) | 365-386 |
Journal | British journal of social psychology |
Volume | 59 |
Issue number | 2 |
Early online date | 30 Oct 2019 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Apr 2020 |
Keywords
- empowerment
- financial intra-household decision-making
- gender inequity
- intimate partner violence
- self-esteem
- women