Publication: The Silenced Women: Can Public Activism Stimulate Reporting of Violence against Women?
Loading...
Date
2021-03
ISSN
Published
2021-03
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
Although violence against women is pervasive and can have severe adverse implications, it is considerably underreported. This paper examines whether public activism against such violence can stimulate disclosure of socially sensitive crimes such as rape and sexual assault. The analysis uses a quasi-experimental setting arising from an infamous gang rape incident that took place on a moving bus in Delhi in 2012. The incident sparked widespread protests demarcating a nationwide ‘social shock’. Exploiting regional variation in exposure to the shock, the analysis finds an increase of 27 percent in reported violence against women after the shock but no change in gender-neutral crimes such as murder, robbery and riots. Additional evidence -- generated from self-compiled high frequency crime data -- suggests that the increase can be attributed to a rise in reporting rather than an increase in occurrence.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Sahay, Abhilasha. 2021. The Silenced Women: Can Public Activism Stimulate Reporting of Violence against Women?. Policy Research Working Paper;No. 9566. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/35245 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Publication The Asymmetric Bank Distress Amplifier of Recessions(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-07-11)One defining feature of financial crises, evident in U.S. and international data, is asymmetric bank distress—concentrated losses on a subset of banks. This paper proposes a model in which shocks to borrowers’ productivity dispersion lead to asymmetric bank losses. The framework exhibits a “bank distress amplifier,” exacerbating economic downturns by causing costly bank failures and raising uncertainty about the solvency of banks, thereby pushing banks to deleverage. Quantitative analysis shows that the bank distress amplifier doubles investment decline and increases the spread by 2.5 times during the Great Recession compared to a standard financial accelerator model. The mechanism helps explain how a seemingly small shock can sometimes trigger a large crisis.Publication From Tailwinds to Headwinds(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-07-10)The first quarter of the twenty-first century has been transformative for emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs). These economies now account for about 45 percent of global GDP, up from about 25 percent in 2000, a trend driven by robust collective growth in the three largest EMDEs—China, India, and Brazil (the EM3). Collectively, EMDEs have contributed about 60 percent of annual global growth since 2000, on average, double the share during the 1990s. Their ascendance was powered by swift global trade and financial integration, especially during the first decade of the century. Interdependence among these economies has also increased markedly. Today, nearly half of goods exports from EMDEs go to other EMDEs, compared to one-quarter in 2000. As cross-border linkages have strengthened, business cycles among EMDEs and between EMDEs and advanced economies have become more synchronized, and a distinct EMDE business cycle has emerged. Cross-border business cycle spillovers from the EM3 to other EMDEs are sizable, at about half of the magnitude of spillovers from the largest advanced economies (the United States, the euro area, and Japan). Yet EMDEs confront a host of headwinds at the turn of the second quarter of the century. Progress implementing structural reforms in many of these economies has stalled. Globally, protectionist measures and geopolitical fragmentation have risen sharply. High debt burdens, demographic shifts, and the rising costs of climate change weigh on economic prospects. A successful policy approach to accelerate growth and development should focus on boosting investment and productivity, navigating a difficult external environment, and enhancing macroeconomic stability.Publication Intergenerational Income Mobility around the World(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-07-09)This paper introduces a new global database with estimates of intergenerational income mobility for 87 countries, covering 84 percent of the world’s population. This marks a notable expansion of the cross-country evidence base on income mobility, particularly among low- and middle-income countries. The estimates indicate that the negative association between income mobility and inequality (known as the Great Gatsby Curve) continues to hold across this wider range of countries. The database also reveals a positive association between income mobility and national income per capita, suggesting that countries achieve higher levels of intergenerational mobility as they grow richer.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 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.
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Women's Voice and Agency : The Role of Legal Institutions and Women's Movements(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2014)Global events like the Beijing Women s Conference of 1995 have resulted in the creation of strong international frameworks that set standards for women s rights around the world. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), the Beijing Platform for Action, and other international norms define the scope of universal rights for women and girls, and have opened new spaces for regional and national legal reform. Bottom-up engagement with these international laws and institutions by local and transnational women s movements has catalyzed widespread changes in lawmaking and transformed standard-setting documents into tools for reform. The following paper discusses four important pillars of women s voice and agency (while recognizing that there are others which are beyond the scope of this review): freedom from the risk of violence; freedom of movement; freedom to make decisions on family formation and the freedom to shape policy. It will examine the ways in which these freedoms impact women s voice and the ways in which women are working to reform law and policy to ensure these four freedoms are accessible to all.Publication Women’s Police Stations and Domestic Violence(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-11)Although women’s police centers have been gaining popularity as a measure to address domestic violence, to date no quantitative evaluations of their impacts on the incidence of domestic violence or any other manifestations of gender equality have been done. This paper estimates the effects of women’s police stations in Brazil on female homicides, as a measure of the most severe form of domestic violence. Given that a high fraction of female deaths among women ages 15 to 49 years can be attributed to aggression by an intimate partner, female homicides appear the best available proxy for severe domestic violence considering the scarcity of data on domestic violence. The paper uses a panel of 2,074 municipalities and takes advantage of the gradual rollout of women’s police stations from 2004 to 2009, to estimate the effect of establishing a women’s police station on the municipal female homicide rate. Although the analysis does not find an association on average, women’s police stations appear to be highly effective among some groups of women: women living in metropolitan areas and younger women. Establishing a women’s police station in a metropolitan municipality is associated with a reduction in the homicide rate by 1.23 deaths per 100,000 women (which roughly amounts to a 17 percent reduction in the average homicide rate in metropolitan municipalities). The reduction in the homicide rate of women ages 15 to 24 is even higher: 5.57 deaths per 100,000 women. Qualitative work suggests that better economic opportunities and less traditional social norms in metropolitan areas may explain the heterogeneous impacts of women’s police stations in metropolitan areas and outside them.Publication Violence Against Women and Girls : Introduction(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2014-12)Violence against women and girls (VAWG) is one of the most oppressive forms of gender inequality and stands as a fundamental barrier to equal participation of women and men in social, economic, and political spheres. Such violence impedes gender equality and the achievement of a range of development outcomes. VAWG is a complex and multifaceted problem that cannot effectively be addressed from a single vantage point. The prevention of, and response to, such violence requires coordinated action across multiple sectors. This resource guide was developed through a partnership between the Global Women s Institute (GWI) at George Washington University, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), and the World Bank Group (WBG). The primary audiences for the guide are IDB and WBG staff and member countries, as well as other development professionals who do not yet have experience addressing VAWG. The purpose of this guide is to provide the reader with basic information on the characteristics and consequences of VAWG, including the operational implications that VAWG can have in several priority sectors of the IDB and WBG. It also offers guidance on how to integrate VAWG prevention and provide quality services to violence survivors across a range of development projects. Lastly, it recommends strategies for integrating VAWG prevention and response into policies and legislation, as well as sector programs and projects.Publication Violence Against Women and Girls : Social Protection Brief(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2014-12)The definition of social protection (SP) programs varies widely, as do the types of interventions included and the specific outcomes sought. These programs can be implemented through public and/or private sectors, with the involvement of single or multiple government sectors, or by some combination of these actors. This brief will specifically focus on four types of social protection interventions: social assistance, social insurance, labor market programs, and early childhood development. It will offer suggestions for integrating violence against women and girls (VAWG) prevention efforts within these interventions. These areas of focus are meant to be illustrative of different social protection programs, rather than to reflect the full breadth of SP programs. In general, SP programs are public interventions that support the poorest populations and assist individuals, households, and communities to better overcome social and economic risks. Examples of programs include: a) social assistance (social safety nets): cash transfers, school feeding, and targeted food assistance; b) social insurance: old-age and disability pensions and unemployment insurance; c) labor market programs: skills-building programs, job-search and matching programs, and improved labor regulations; and d) early childhood development. Other program interventions, which fall under what is referred to as social protection, aim to strengthen families abilities to respond to hardships by promoting gender equality. Examples include early childhood development, projects that focus on at-risk youth, or targeted poverty alleviation programs.Publication Collective Action and Women's Agency : A Background Paper(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013)Following the findings and policy messages of the World Development Report (WDR) on gender equality and development 2012, the World Bankapos;s gender and development group are seeking to deepen the evidence base on promoting womenapos;s agency as a basis for enhanced action on gender equality. A component of this work is a review of evidence on the relationship between collective action and womenapos;s agency: whether and how different forms of collective action enhance womenapos;s ability to exercise agency in key domains and the operational implications for Bank policies and programs. The paper seeks to clarify the conceptual terrain of collective action; identify the links with womenapos;s agency; and draw lessons from the evidence on what works and what does not for boosting development and gender-equality outcomes. It draws attention on the somewhat smaller body of empirical research examining the mechanics of collective action and its links with economic and social wellbeing, particularly within developing societies. The findings are complex, but the overall conclusions are consistent with an emerging body of literature now questioning participation as a silver bullet in development and calling for more flexible, context-sensitive approaches for promoting agency, and empowerment.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Global Economic Prospects, June 2024(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-06-11)After several years of negative shocks, global growth is expected to hold steady in 2024 and then edge up in the next couple of years, in part aided by cautious monetary policy easing as inflation gradually declines. However, economic prospects are envisaged to remain tepid, especially in the most vulnerable countries. Risks to the outlook, while more balanced, are still tilted to the downside, including the possibility of escalating geopolitical tensions, further trade fragmentation, and higher-for-longer interest rates. Natural disasters related to climate change could also hinder activity. Subdued growth prospects across many emerging market and developing economies and continued risks underscore the need for decisive policy action at the global and national levels. Global Economic Prospects is a World Bank Group Flagship Report that examines global economic developments and prospects, with a special focus on emerging market and developing economies, on a semiannual basis (in January and June). Each edition includes analytical pieces on topical policy challenges faced by these economies.Publication World Development Report 2006(Washington, DC, 2005)This year’s Word Development Report (WDR), the twenty-eighth, looks at the role of equity in the development process. It defines equity in terms of two basic principles. The first is equal opportunities: that a person’s chances in life should be determined by his or her talents and efforts, rather than by pre-determined circumstances such as race, gender, social or family background. The second principle is the avoidance of extreme deprivation in outcomes, particularly in health, education and consumption levels. This principle thus includes the objective of poverty reduction. The report’s main message is that, in the long run, the pursuit of equity and the pursuit of economic prosperity are complementary. In addition to detailed chapters exploring these and related issues, the Report contains selected data from the World Development Indicators 2005‹an appendix of economic and social data for over 200 countries. This Report offers practical insights for policymakers, executives, scholars, and all those with an interest in economic development.Publication Classroom Assessment to Support Foundational Literacy(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-03-21)This document focuses primarily on how classroom assessment activities can measure students’ literacy skills as they progress along a learning trajectory towards reading fluently and with comprehension by the end of primary school grades. The document addresses considerations regarding the design and implementation of early grade reading classroom assessment, provides examples of assessment activities from a variety of countries and contexts, and discusses the importance of incorporating classroom assessment practices into teacher training and professional development opportunities for teachers. The structure of the document is as follows. The first section presents definitions and addresses basic questions on classroom assessment. Section 2 covers the intersection between assessment and early grade reading by discussing how learning assessment can measure early grade reading skills following the reading learning trajectory. Section 3 compares some of the most common early grade literacy assessment tools with respect to the early grade reading skills and developmental phases. Section 4 of the document addresses teacher training considerations in developing, scoring, and using early grade reading assessment. Additional issues in assessing reading skills in the classroom and using assessment results to improve teaching and learning are reviewed in section 5. Throughout the document, country cases are presented to demonstrate how assessment activities can be implemented in the classroom in different contexts.Publication Sourcebook on the Foundations of Social Protection Delivery Systems(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2020-07-30)The Sourcebook synthesizes real-world experiences and lessons learned of social protection delivery systems from around the world, with a particular focus on social and labor benefits and services. It takes a practical approach, seeking to address concrete “how-to” questions, including: How do countries deliver social protection benefits and services? How do they do so effectively and efficiently? How do they ensure dynamic inclusion, especially for the most vulnerable and needy? How do they promote better coordination and integration—not only among social protection programs but also programs in other parts of government? How can they meet the needs of their intended populations and provide a better client experience? The Sourcebook structures itself around eight key principles that can frame the delivery systems mindset: (1) delivery systems evolve over time, do so in a non-linear fashion, and are affected by the starting point(s); (2) additional efforts should be made to “do simple well”, and to do so from the start rather than trying to remedy by after-the-fact adding-on of features or aspects; (3) quality implementation matters, and weaknesses in the design or structure of any core system element will negatively impact delivery; (4) defining the “first mile” for people interface greatly affects the system and overall delivery, and is most improved when that “first mile” is understood as the weakest link in delivery systems); (5) delivery systems do not operate in a vacuum and thus should not be developed in silos; (6) delivery systems can contribute more broadly to government’s ability to intervene in other sectors, such as health insurance subsidies, scholarships, social energy tariffs, housing benefits, and legal services; (7) there is no single blueprint for delivery systems, but there are commonalities and those common elements constitute the core of the delivery systems framework; (8) inclusion and coordination are pervasive and perennial dual challenges, and they contribute to the objectives of effectiveness and efficiency.Publication Argentina Country Climate and Development Report(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-11)The Argentina Country Climate and Development Report (CCDR) explores opportunities and identifies trade-offs for aligning Argentina’s growth and poverty reduction policies with its commitments on, and its ability to withstand, climate change. It assesses how the country can: reduce its vulnerability to climate shocks through targeted public and private investments and adequation of social protection. The report also shows how Argentina can seize the benefits of a global decarbonization path to sustain a more robust economic growth through further development of Argentina’s potential for renewable energy, energy efficiency actions, the lithium value chain, as well as climate-smart agriculture (and land use) options. Given Argentina’s context, this CCDR focuses on win-win policies and investments, which have large co-benefits or can contribute to raising the country’s growth while helping to adapt the economy, also considering how human capital actions can accompany a just transition.