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Research reveals that women's financial independence can raise intimate partner violence risk without changing patriarchal beliefs.
The socioeconomic empowerment of women is seen as critical to gender equality, the absence of which is associated with high rates of gender-based violence. However, when it comes to intimate partner violence, recent findings from the South African Social Attitudes Survey suggest that interventions to increase the financial independence of women might backfire if not accompanied by a corresponding transformation of patriarchal belief systems.
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Human Sciences Research Council (2026) studied this question.
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