Industrial Parks and Domestic Power: Work, Industrialization, and Intimate Partner Violence in Nigeria

This paper examines the effect of industrial zone openings on women's employment, relative earnings, and intimate partner violence (IPV) in Nigeria. I exploit variation in the timing of industrial zone openings to use a staggered difference-in-differences model. I compare women near industrial zones to women near not-yet-built industrial zones and capture the effect of the average treatment effect on the treated. I perform this analysis for women within 10, 15, 20, and 25 kilometers of an industrial zone. I find that being within all distances of an industrial zone increases a woman's relative earnings compared to women in non-industrialized zones. Women within 25 km of industrial zones also experienced significantly less emotional violence and more sexual violence than those in non-industrialized areas. The percentage of women who experienced any form of violence was also lower for those within 20 and 25 km of industrial areas. However, the possible presence of pre-trends threatens the validity of these results.