Women’s perceptions of gender-based violence in Mali

Gender-based violence (GBV) is widespread across the world, and Mali is one of the countries characterized by the highest prevalence rates. Following up on a paper studying men’s justifications for and perpetration of GBV in Bamako, the capital city, we elicit women’s attitudes towards early marriage, female genital mutilation (FGM) and intimate partner violence (IPV). We administer four list experiments (LEs), whose results are then compared to those of direct questions to estimate response biases. Additionally, we question women about their second-order beliefs on men and women’s attitudes towards FGM and IPV in Bamako. Our results show that women tend to misreport their attitudes towards GBV. While they declare attitudes that are less favorable to early marriage and IPV than what the LE reveals, the reverse is true as far as FGM is concerned. Women, like men (Bertelli et al., 2025), are less conservative than what they openly declare about FGM. Besides, women’s perception of the support for FGM aligns relatively well with what men and women, respectively, openly declare. The misperception of the actual prevailing attitudes towards FGM could participate in the persistence of a practice which is, in fact, much less supported than what people declare and believe.