Women’s Political Representation and Intimate Partner Violence

Recent studies demonstrate that female leaders can improve gender-specific outcomes alongmultiple dimensions through better provision of public goods and legislative changes that benefit women. Usingquasi-random exposure to female leaders elected to state legislatures in India, this paper shows that there may alsobe an unintended effect: an increase in rural women’s reported experience of physical spousal abuse. We find thata plausible channel underlying this effect is an increase in women’s modern contraceptive use—potentially resulting fromimprovements in public provision of health services—which leads to marital conflict, especially when the husband’s sonpreference is stronger than the wife’s.