The Hidden Costs of War: How Armed Conflicts Reshape Women’s Lives and Development in India

The study investigates the impact of military expenditure, which represents armed conflicts, on women’s social and economic well-being in India using annual time series data from 2000- 2021. An Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) modelling framework is employed to study the impact of military expenditure on female unemployment rate, female secondary school enrollment rate, female suicide mortality and the incidence of domestic violence. Moreover, GDP growth rate, CPI, Real Interest rate and of Household and NPISHs final consumption expenditure serve as control variables. Stationarity is assessed using unit root testing, particularly the ADF, PP and KPSS test. The results indicate that military expenditure has a negative effect on female unemployment. These changes are however, not translated into subsequent periods, indicating only a short-term boost in employment. Further, the effect of military expenditure on education is negative. Military expenditure also showed a positive relationship with suicide rates and domestic violence. The findings suggest that the military expenditure has a detrimental impact of women’s well-being. This highlights the need to balance defence spending with development policies.