Intimate partner violence against women in low- and middle-income countries: associations with parenting practices and early childhood development.

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development highlights the need to prevent and respond to violence against women and girls.

It also affirms the need to invest in early childhood care for the promotion of sustainable development in low and middle-income (LMICs).

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is one of the most common and extreme manifestations of gender inequality worldwide, and has a higher prevalence and more severe consequences for women and children living in LMICs. I aim to examine the association of IPV with parenting practices and early childhood development in LMICs.

This will be done using data from nationally representative household surveys (DHS) carried out since 2010 in at least 10 LMICs, and a large population-based prospective cohort study in Brazil, following over 4,000 children born in 2015.

A key objective of the project is to explore whether women´s mental health mediates the proposed associations, and the role of women’s empowerment levels in the associations under study.

The empirical evidence generated from this project will contribute to increasing visibility of the intergenerational consequences of IPV on children and provide guidance for the direction of global resources to prevent gender-based violence.