When the Prince Is Not Charming: How Gender Bias in Folklore Shapes Intimate Partner Violence

This paper investigates whether gender norms embedded in folklore shape intimate partner violence. We test the hypothesis that oral traditions that portray men as dominant, violent, and physically active, and women as submissive and domestically oriented, are associated with higher intimate partner violence today. We combine individual-level data on intimate partner violence with folklore-based measures of gender bias constructed from anthropological data on oral traditions covering 92 cultural groups from 26 developing countries over the 2003-2024 period. Our results show a robust and economically significant positive relation between male dominance bias in folklore and women’s exposure to intimate partner violence. Additional analyses reveal that the effect is driven primarily by representations of male violence and dominance, applies to non-sexual physical violence, and is stronger for older women, while being mitigated by education and household wealth. These findings highlight folklore as a persistent cultural foundation of domestic violence and underscore the role of narratives in shaping gendered behaviors. These results suggest that addressing the cultural roots of gender inequality is essential for the success of development interventions aimed at improving women's agency and human capital.