| dc.description.abstract | Violence against women is one of the most pervasive forms of human rights violations worldwide. Over one third of all women have been beaten, forced into sex, or otherwise abused in their lifetime. Despite this, violence against women has only in later years been recognized internationally as a threat to the health and rights of women as well as to national development. Given the extent and consequences of violence against women, it is urgent to identify strategies for action to reduce the violence. The current study uses a cross-sectional household survey from Peru to examine whether female ownership of land affects the prevalence of physical violence against women. According to economic bargaining theory, transfer of land from a husband to his wife will empower the woman, as an increase in the female relative share of land within the household will raise her threat point and thus her bargaining position within the household. This is in turn theorized to affect the level of violence in the family, as a more economically independent woman has a superior outside option and stands in a better position to negotiate a more favourable outcome for herself. To be able to make causal inference, not only measure a correlation, I make use of an exogenous change in land tenure which increased the share of land for only a subset of the women in my sample. A historical coincidence made only certain communities in Peru eligible for a land-titling program, and it was thus only women in these communities who received an increased share of land. I find the impact on the probability of ever having been physically abused to be 7,9% lower in the communities where the land-titling program was conducted - significant on a 1% level. In the communities where women have been empowered through greater ownership of land, leading to a higher threat point and thereby bargaining power within the household, there is less abuse. Both reductions of gender-based violence and increase of female land owners are part of the UN's platform for action to strengthen gender equality and reduce poverty. The interpretation of my result, I argue, is that these two strategies are interrelated - empowering women through greater ownership of land may reduce domestic abuse. | eng |