Empowering women can actually lead to a temporary spike in fights and violence at home.
SSRN · March 18, 2026 · 6432690
The Takeaway
This paper identifies a 'strategic gap' where early empowerment gives women the agency to voice dissatisfaction but not yet the credible leverage to leave the household. In response, partners may use strategic escalation and conflict to suppress this newly activated 'voice' before the woman becomes fully independent.
From the abstract
While female empowerment is intended to improve welfare, empirical evidence often reveals an inverse U-shaped relationship between women’s outside options and household conflict. I develop a household bargaining model, inspired by Hirschman’s exit–voice framework, that explains this pattern. By modeling bargaining access as endogenous, I identify a strategic gap between the activation of voice (agency) and the credibility of exit (leverage). Early gains induce women to voice previously suppresse