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Paper long abstract:

We evaluate the causal impact of average neighbourhood attitudes justifying intimate partner violence (IPV) on one's own attitudes, using nationally representative data from the fifth wave of the National Family Health Survey of India. To address endogeneity concerns in estimating peer influences, we utilize exogenous variation in the average exposure of neighbouring women to their parental IPV in a leave-one-out instrumental variable strategy. We find robust evidence that a 1 SD increase in a woman's average neighbourhood attitudes justifying IPV leads to a 0.36 SD increase in her attitudes justifying the same. We establish the importance of peer influences on a woman's acceptability of IPV as justifiable, especially among less educated, unemployed, having no assets or media exposure and bearing more daughters than sons, making them more impressionable. This underscores the need for enhanced implementation of policies targeting women's empowerment to arrest the perpetration of gender-biased social norms.