The Role of Employment and Self-Efficacy in Young Women and Their Attitudinal Acceptance of Intimate Partner Violence: A Quantitative Study

Background and Purpose. Roughly three out of four female intimate partner violence (IPV) survivors experience violence for the first time between the ages of 11 and 24, which is a concerning impediment to female youth’s healthy development. The intersection of youth and the onset of IPV has generated awareness campaigns designed for adolescents and young adults. These campaigns have largely targeted attitudes about dating violence and violence against women, attempting to raise awareness of violence and reduce participants’ acceptance of it. Unfortunately, young people’s attitudes about violence against women are a deeply complex target for intervention. It is therefore suggested that other intervention targets may be introduced as a proxy for the thornier target of attitudes about violence against women. One promising proxy target is the employment status of young adult women. The purpose of this study, therefore, is to further explore the relationship between young women’s employment characteristics and their acceptance of violence against women within the context of empowerment theory.

 Methods. Data from the Relationship Dynamics and Social Life (RDSL) study was used, which was designed to investigate the dynamics of sexual behavior, contraceptive use, and unintended pregnancy in a cohort of 1,003 randomly sampled young adult women, ages 18-19. The present study utilizes data from the baseline and second interviews of the longitudinal survey. ANCOVA was used to analyze the relationship between young women’s employment history and acceptance of violence against women, while controlling for a self-reported self-esteem. To further explore the work history variable, chi-square analyses were utilized to examine the association between young women’s work history, maternal attitudes towards employment and engagement, and individual attitudes towards financial management.

 Results. Violence against women and self-esteem were separately conceptualized into individual factors by collapsing relevant variables with adequate reliability (a³.70), which was supported through principle component analysis. Whether a young woman had ever worked a job in the past was a significant predictor of decreased acceptance of violence against women, when controlling for self-esteem (F[2, 560]= 8.24, p<.001). Maternal attitudes towards employment (x² [3]=9.83, p=.02), education (x² [3]=11.80, p=.008), and individual attitudes towards financial management (x² [4]=24.73, p<.001) were all significantly associated with young women’s history of working. Those young women who had a mother with some college or greater, a mother with some work history or greater, and the capacity to manage their own finances half the time or more were the most likely to have reported their own work history.

 Conclusions. Promoting employment and financial education programs for young women is a way to improve their empowerment. The results of this study, however, point to the potential utility of employment and financial education programs as a method to influence young women’s attitudes towards violence against women. Social work practitioners ought to consider developing educational pilot programs based upon these findings, and further research and program evaluation is indicated for the assessment of these programs’ influence on young women’s attitudes about violence against women