Publication: Addressing Gender-Based Violence in the Latin American and Caribbean Region : A Critical Review of Interventions
Loading...
Published
2004-10
ISSN
Date
2013-06-18
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
The authors present an overview of gender-based violence (GBV) in Latin America, with special emphasis on good practice interventions to prevent GBV or offer services to its survivors or perpetrators. Intimate partner violence and sexual coercion are the most common forms of GBV, and these are the types of GBV that they analyze. GBV has serious consequences for women's health and well-being, ranging from fatal outcomes, such as homicide, suicide, and AIDS-related deaths, to nonfatal outcomes, such as physical injuries, chronic pain syndrome, gastrointestinal disorders, complications during pregnancy, miscarriage, and low birth-weight of children. GBV also poses significant costs for the economies of developing countries, including lower worker productivity and incomes, and lower rates of accumulation of human and social capital. The authors examine good practice approaches in justice, health, education, and multisectoral approaches. In each sector, they identify good practices for: (1) law and policies; (2) institutional reforms; (3) community-level interventions; and (4) individual behavior change strategies.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Morrison, Andrew; Ellsberg, Mary; Bott, Sarah. 2004. Addressing Gender-Based Violence in the Latin American and Caribbean Region : A Critical Review of Interventions. Policy Research Working Paper;No. 3438. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/13997 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Publication Global Poverty Revisited Using 2021 PPPs and New Data on Consumption(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-06-05)Recent improvements in survey methodologies have increased measured consumption in many low- and lower-middle-income countries that now collect a more comprehensive measure of household consumption. Faced with such methodological changes, countries have frequently revised upward their national poverty lines to make them appropriate for the new measures of consumption. This in turn affects the World Bank’s global poverty lines when they are periodically revised. The international poverty line, which is based on the typical poverty line in low-income countries, increases by around 40 percent to $3.00 when the more recent national poverty lines as well as the 2021 purchasing power parities are incorporated. The net impact of the changes in international prices, the poverty line, and new survey data (including new data for India) is an increase in global extreme poverty by some 125 million people in 2022, and a significant shift of poverty away from South Asia and toward Sub-Saharan Africa. The changes at higher poverty lines, which are more relevant to middle-income countries, are mixed.Publication The Macroeconomic Implications of Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation Options(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-05-29)Estimating the macroeconomic implications of climate change impacts and adaptation options is a topic of intense research. This paper presents a framework in the World Bank's macrostructural model to assess climate-related damages. This approach has been used in many Country Climate and Development Reports, a World Bank diagnostic that identifies priorities to ensure continued development in spite of climate change and climate policy objectives. The methodology captures a set of impact channels through which climate change affects the economy by (1) connecting a set of biophysical models to the macroeconomic model and (2) exploring a set of development and climate scenarios. The paper summarizes the results for five countries, highlighting the sources and magnitudes of their vulnerability --- with estimated gross domestic product losses in 2050 exceeding 10 percent of gross domestic product in some countries and scenarios, although only a small set of impact channels is included. The paper also presents estimates of the macroeconomic gains from sector-level adaptation interventions, considering their upfront costs and avoided climate impacts and finding significant net gross domestic product gains from adaptation opportunities identified in the Country Climate and Development Reports. Finally, the paper discusses the limits of current modeling approaches, and their complementarity with empirical approaches based on historical data series. The integrated modeling approach proposed in this paper can inform policymakers as they make proactive decisions on climate change adaptation and resilience.Publication Gender Gaps in the Performance of Small Firms: Evidence from Urban Peru(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-09-23)This paper estimates the gender gap in the performance of firms in Peru using representative data on both formal and informal firms. On average, informal female-led firms have lower sales, labor productivity, and profits compared to their male-led counterparts, with differences more pronounced when controlling for observable determinants of firm performance. However, gender gaps are only significant at the bottom of the performance distribution of informal firms, and these gaps disappear at the top of the distribution of informal firms and for formal firms. Possible explanations for the performance gaps at the bottom of the distribution include the higher likelihood of small, female-led firms being home-based, which is linked to lower profits, and their concentration in less profitable sectors. The paper provides suggestive evidence that household responsibilities play a key role in explaining the gender gap in firm performance among informal firms. Therefore, policies that promote access to care services or foster a more equal distribution of household activities may reduce gender productivity gaps and allow for a more efficient allocation of resources.Publication The Exposure of Workers to Artificial Intelligence in Low- and Middle-Income Countries(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-02-05)Research on the labor market implications of artificial intelligence has focused principally on high-income countries. This paper analyzes this issue using microdata from a large set of low- and middle-income countries, applying a measure of potential artificial intelligence occupational exposure to a harmonized set of labor force surveys for 25 countries, covering a population of 3.5 billion people. The approach advances work by using harmonized microdata at the level of individual workers, which allows for a multivariate analysis of factors associated with exposure. Additionally, unlike earlier papers, the paper uses highly detailed (4 digit) occupation codes, which provide a more reliable mapping of artificial intelligence exposure to occupation. Results within countries, show that artificial intelligence exposure is higher for women, urban workers, and those with higher education. Exposure decreases by country income level, with high exposure for just 12 percent of workers in low-income countries and 15 percent of workers in lower-middle-income countries. Furthermore, lack of access to electricity limits effective exposure in low-income countries. These results suggest that for developing countries, and in particular low-income countries, the labor market impacts of artificial intelligence will be more limited than in high-income countries. While greater exposure to artificial intelligence indicates larger potential for future changes in certain occupations, it does not equate to job loss, as it could result in augmentation of worker productivity, automation of some tasks, or both.Publication Geopolitical Risks and Trade(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-09-23)This paper studies the impact of geopolitical risks on international trade, using the Geopolitical Risk (GPR) index of Caldara and Iacoviello (2022) and an empirical gravity model. The impact of spikes in geopolitical risk on trade is negative, strong, and heterogeneous across sectors. The findings show that increases in geopolitical risk reduce trade by about 30 to 40 percent. These effects are equivalent to an increase of global tariffs of up to 14 percent. Services trade is most vulnerable to geopolitical risks, followed by agriculture, and the impact on manufacturing trade is moderate. These negative effects are partially mitigated by cultural and geographic proximity, as well as by the presence of trade agreements.
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Preventing and Responding to Gender-Based Violence in Middle and Low-Income Countries : A Global Review and Analysis(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2005-06)Worldwide, patterns of violence against women differ markedly from violence against men. For example, women are more likely than men to be sexually assaulted or killed by someone they know. The United Nations has defined violence against women as "gender-based" violence, to acknowledge that such violence is rooted in gender inequality and is often tolerated and condoned by laws, institutions, and community norms. Violence against women is not only a profound violation of human rights, but also a costly impediment to a country's national development. While gender-based violence occurs in many forms throughout the life cycle, this review focuses on two of the most common types-physical intimate partner violence and sexual violence by any perpetrator. Unfortunately, the knowledge base about effective initiatives to prevent and respond to gender-based violence is relatively limited. Few approaches have been rigorously evaluated, even in high-income countries. And such evaluations involve numerous methodological challenges. Nonetheless, the authors review what is known about more and less effective-or at least promising-approaches to prevent and respond to gender-based violence. They present definitions, recent statistics, health consequences, costs, and risk factors of gender-based violence. The authors analyze good practice initiatives in the justice, health, and education sectors, as well as multisectoral approaches. For each of these sectors, they examine initiatives that have addressed laws and policies, institutional reforms, community mobilization, and individual behavior change strategies. Finally, the authors identify priorities for future research and action, including funding research on the health and socioeconomic costs of violence against women, encouraging science-based program evaluations, disseminating evaluation results across countries, promoting investment in effective prevention and treatment initiatives, and encouraging public-private partnerships.Publication Addressing Gender-Based Violence in Latin America and the Caribbean : A Critical Review of Interventions(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2005-01)The authors present an overview of gender-based violence (GBV) in Latin America, with special emphasis on good practice interventions to prevent GBV or offer services to its survivors or perpetrators. Intimate partner violence and sexual coercion are the most common forms of GBV and these are the types of GBV that they analyzes. GBV has serious consequences for women's health and well-being, ranging from fatal outcomes, such as homicide, suicide and AIDS-related deaths, to non-fatal outcomes, such as physical injuries, chronic pain syndrome, gastrointestinal disorders, complications during pregnancy, miscarriage, and low birth-weight of children.Publication Interventions to Prevent or Reduce Violence Against Women and Girls : A Systematic Review of Reviews(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2014)Violence against Women and Girls (VAWG) is a pervasive global problem. It is a violation of basic human rights and a drag on development. Much of the research to-date on the topic-including a major recent World Health Organization study to produce global prevalence rates has focused on better understanding the scale and nature of the problem. The present study builds on this body or research while shifting focus to synthesizing global evidence on potential solutions. This paper, a systematic review of reviews, breaks new ground by synthesizing evidence on the effects of VAWG prevention interventions. It examines the diversity of geographical context, the types of violence addressed, and the numerous approaches that have been used to combat VAWG. Additionally the review summarizes the quality of evidence on efficacy and effectiveness in order to highlight strengths and gaps of interventions on a global scale and could serve as a point of reference for those intending to undertake future design, implementation, and evaluation of interventions. This paper finds that knowledge of intervention impacts on VAWG prevention is growing, but is still highly limited. Nonetheless, a small but growing body of rigorously tested interventions demonstrates that preventing VAWG is possible and can achieve large effect sizes. The interventions with the most positive findings used multiple, well-integrated approaches and engaged with multiple stakeholders over time. They also addressed underlying risk factors for violence, including social norms regarding gender dynamics and the acceptability of violence. These examples point to the imperative of greatly increasing investment both in innovative programming in primary prevention, as well as in high-quality experimental and quasi-experimental evaluations to guide international efforts to end VAWG.Publication Sexual and Gender-Based Violence : What is the World Bank Doing and What Have We Learned, A Strategic Review(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-11)Sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) is the most prevalent form of gender inequality. More than one third of the women in the world have experienced some form of gender based violence. The impacts of such violence extend far beyond the individual survivors, affecting households and communities, and spanning across generations. SGBV is widely recognized as a development constraint that falls within the World Bank's mandate. This report is an effort to take stock of the experience of the World Bank in addressing SGBV, from 2008 to 2013, in order to capture lessons for engaging more strategically on this issue across the Bank portfolio. The report elaborates on the prevalence of SGBV, the methodology adopted for the purpose of this review, an overview of World Bank activities for SGBV, lessons learned, addressing SGBV in design and implementation, cross-cutting and operational lessons, conclusions and recommendations.Publication Reproductive Health(Washington, DC, 2002-03)Reproductive health (RH) problems account for a significant part of the burden of disease suffered by poor people in developing countries. Poor women and men are more afflicted with RH problems and often lack access to minimal RH care even when average levels of RH in the country are good. Many RH problems are most cost-effectively managed by prevention - serious problems are costly and very difficult to solve once manifest. This article covers the types of interventions needed to sustain reproductive health including increasing girls' education, preventing and managing sexually transmitted disease, providing contraception to avoid abortion, improving pre-natal and delivery care, increasing the number of skilled providers of health care, post-abortion care, bolstering maternal health services, and reducing practices that increase reproductive health risks such as unsafe sex, female genital mutilation, and domestic violence.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Error: Could not load results for 'https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/server/api/item/relateditemlistconfigs/6f52790d-cab4-5e44-88c3-6f1cc614497e_downloads/itemlist'.