Domestic Violence and Woman’s Functional Capabilities: Circularity Analysis in Sen’s Development Framework

Abstract

Sen’s capabilities approach provide useful insights to study multidimensional concept of women’s well-being and development. Women’s capabilities are the combination of economic and social capital. Domestic violence is a non-monetary, social conversion factor that affects women’s capabilities. However studies have proved circularity in Sen’s development framework because of entanglement between the concepts of conversion factors, capabilities and resources. The current study uses secondary data collected from Pakistan Demographic and Health Survey (2012-13). Women’s capabilities indexes are constructed by assigning equal, normative and data-driven weighting schemes. The purpose of formulating different kinds of indexes was to check the consistency of circularity analysis. In order to empirically analyze circularity in Sen’s capabilities approach, a simultaneous equation model is used. Three stage least square estimation technique is used for this purpose. Overall our findings suggest that an economic and social capability of women declines the incidences of domestic violence. Likewise domestic violence decreases social and economic capabilities of women. Similarly both forms of capitals have a positive impact on each other. Thus our findings proved “circularity” in Sen’s capabilities approach, the results obtained from normative and equal weighted criteria are more consistent with each other and theory as compared to PCA.