Temporary acceleration or long-term change? Experimental evidence on female empowerment and intimate partner violence in urban Liberia
Outcomes: Gender‑Based Violence, Women’s Economic Empowerment
View SourceKey Social Norms Take-aways The intervention produced a durable shift in how women perceived the normative environment surrounding intimate partner violence. Although women’s own attitudes eventually converged with the control group, treatment participants continued to perceive substantially less community acceptance of violence 3.5 years after the program. The authors interpret this as evidence that intensive psychosocial programming can create a lasting critical lens through which women understand and challenge the normalization of violence in their communities, even when changes in individual attitudes are no longer detectable.
Objectives To evaluate the short- and longer-term effects of a multifaceted female empowerment program in Monrovia, Liberia, on intimate partner violence, psychological well-being, economic outcomes, and social norms.
Methods The study used a randomized controlled trial of 395 women, with follow-up surveys one and 3.5 years after program completion, supplemented by focus group discussions with 20 treatment participants. Social norms were measured using seven scenarios assessing whether wife beating was justified under different circumstances. Women reported both their own beliefs and their perceptions of what “most people in their community” believed; responses were combined into composite indices.
Intervention Details The 12-month Women Training and Integration Program combined intensive psychosocial programming—including counseling, cognitive behavioral therapy, relationship and conflict management, and stress management—with vocational and business training. The psychosocial curriculum explicitly addressed how intimate partner violence becomes normalized and how women can challenge these norms within their social networks. Planned business start-up grants were not delivered because of funding constraints.
Results One year after the program, emotional violence declined by 17 percentage points, physical violence by 19 points, physical or sexual violence by 21 points, and any intimate partner violence by 14 points. By 3.5 years, violence remained near these reduced levels among treatment women, but treatment-control differences disappeared because violence also declined substantially among controls. Perceived community acceptance of violence remained 0.24 standard deviations lower among treatment women at 3.5 years, while their own attitudes converged with controls. Economic and psychological well-being effects were largely null.
Conclusions The findings suggest that the program generated durable reductions in intimate partner violence among treated women, likely primarily through psychosocial and relational pathways rather than economic empowerment. The persistent difference in perceived community norms was the clearest long-term intervention effect, suggesting that changing how women interpret and respond to the normative environment may be an important pathway for sustained violence prevention.
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