Gender and intimate partner violence considerations for cash transfer programming in South Sudan

As the use of cash and voucher assistance increases in South Sudan, there is a continued need to understand its potential interactions with gender norms and intimate partner violence. This paper is part of a larger, mixed methods study whose aims were to measure the association between cash transfer program participation and intimate partner violence (IPV) in Gogrial West, South Sudan; to understand how receipt of cash transfers and the way they are delivered may affect gender relations, power dynamics, and IPV in receiving households, and to identify ways to improve design of cash transfers to mitigate IPV risk and enhance positive effects on gender relations. This paper presents results from qualitative research to investigate gender norms and intimate partner violence in the context of cash programming in Gogrial West, South Sudan. Forty-one key informant interviews, 12 focus group discussions, and 30 individual in-depth interviews were conducted over two rounds of data collection between October 2019 and December 2021. The most common gender norms and IPV behaviors included those relating to livelihoods and unmet needs, household decision-making and household stress, family structures, marital disagreements, and perceived acceptability of IPV. Qualitative analysis suggests that the cash transfer program did not particularly disrupt gender dynamics within households, a situation that would heighten risks of intimate partner violence. More participants reported that the cash program decreased intimate partner violence by reducing household stress, but overall evidence on the direct association of this cash program with IPV is limited.