This research project merges pioneering work developed by Professor Tamsin Bradley in Myanmar, Nepal, and Pakistan with work by Dr. Caroline Day on youth, transitions to adulthood, and aspirations for the future in Zambia. Started in January 2019, the project is funded by the University of Portsmouth Themes Research Innovation Fund.
Gender-based violence (GBV) is widespread in Zambia. Fifty percent of women and girls report experiencing it at some point in their life.
From the age of 15 years onwards, almost half of all Zambian women have experienced physical violence, according to 2013-2014 Demographic Household Survey (DHS). However, the deep normalisation and cultural acceptance of gender-based violence means figures are widely under-reported.
This project takes an intersectional approach to investigate whether education and employment opportunities for women can act as enablers to reduce the prevalence of GBV.
The research generated a data set of 47 qualitative interviews with different socio-economic groupings of women alongside 10 men. It offers an in-depth and complex understanding of the different intersections between violence, employment, education, and social class.
The respondents are mostly domestic workers, construction workers, and people working with consulting and government agencies or in entrepreneurial activities.
The research also includes interviews with a range of key agencies working with women such as Oxfam, World Vision, YWCA, and local agencies supporting women in Business.
The research investigates whether education and employment can raise women’s and girls’ aspirations, supporting increased resilience to challenge GBV. In particular: does education and employment empower women sufficiently to challenge the social normalisation of GBV in Zambia?
Research question
How can approaches increase women’s economic engagement also tackle violence against women in Zambia?
Research aim
To generate evidence that can enable better decision-making in programme and policy design so that women’s economic empowerment is enhanced while at the same time tackling GBV.
Objective
To understand the complex, interactive relationship between Violence Against Women (VAW) and Women’s Economic Empowerment (WEE) and how approaches can work best.
This can be broken down as follows:
- To understand how violence currently shapes women’s economic engagement patterns, and to ascertain how best to address this.
- To uncover the complex ways in which earning or generating an income shapes/alters (both positively and negatively) the forms and levels of violence that women experience, and how it affects their levels of vulnerability.
- To unpack and describe how approaches to enhancing women’s economic activity can support the prevention of, protection from, and response to GBV, and to ascertain how sociocultural contexts and gendered power relations interact to impact these processes.
Methodology
The project’s overall research methodology involves the use of qualitative approaches such as in-depth interviews and focus group discussions with different socio-economic groupings of women, men, and practitioners/policymakers.
A clear perspective on women’s experiences and voices as active citizens within society is necessary, particularly in light of their under-representation in wider public discourses on economic empowerment and violence.
This research develops an understanding of the beliefs, values, social frameworks, and practical conditions (in communities, in the workplace, and on the way to work) that shape both violence against women and women’s economic engagement and provides an intersectional analysis of various relevant sociocultural, economic, and political factors.