Inside the Kin Network: Consanguineous Marriage, Patriarchal Bargaining, and Women's Acceptance of Intimate Partner Violence in Pakistan

Sana Khalil and Angela Warner

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Abstract: We investigate the relationship between consanguineous (close-kin) marriage and women's acceptance of intimate partner violence (IPV) in Pakistan. We argue that consanguineous marriages reinforce overlapping kinship networks that intensify surveillance over women's mobility and bodily autonomy, and that this mechanism operates selectively -- predicting higher IPV acceptance in domains that directly challenge male authority rather than in domains linked to routine domestic performance. We also offer an explanation for the scenario-specific normative hierarchy in women's acceptance of IPV, which has been consistently documented in the literature but never systematically investigated. Using a sample of 15,065 ever-married women from the Pakistan Demographic and Health Survey 2017-18 and applying propensity score matching and Mahalanobis distance matching, we find that consanguineous marriage independently increases women's likelihood of accepting IPV. Women's education and participation in household decision-making consistently act as protective factors, while large regional fixed effects indicate that IPV attitudes are heavily shaped by local institutional and normative environments. Propensity score matching estimates reveal a distinct gradient: women in consanguineous marriages are significantly more likely to justify IPV when a wife goes out without permission, refuses sexual intercourse, or argues with her husband, but show no elevated acceptance for domestic task failures. These findings are robust across alternative matching estimators. Our results suggest that effective IPV prevention in high-consanguinity settings must extend beyond couple-centered approaches to engage broader kinship networks, such as including in-laws, male relatives, elders, and extended family members, as primary targets for norm change.

Date: 2026-07
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