# 5.2 The BH insurgency and key drivers of IPV

In both the BH affected and unaffected areas, the proportion of women experiencing controlling behavior from their husband/partner increases during the BH insurgency. However, the increase is greatest in the BH area, where the number of women reporting controlling behavior from their husband/partner increases from 60 to 70 percent during the BH insurgency. In contrast, there is only a small increase in the percentage of women experiencing controlling behaviors (from 60 to 62 percent) in the non-BH areas (Table 5).

Table 5: Women’s experience of controlling behavior by husband/partner and women’s decisionmaking autonomy in Nigeria before and after Boko Haram, 2009 and 2013, percent

|**Variables**||**BH**|**Area**||**Non B**|**H Area**||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
||Before<br>BH|During<br>BH|Difference|Before<br>BH|During<br>BH|Difference|N<br>(Total)|
|**Controlling behavior by husband/partner**|60|70|10***|60|62|2***||
|N|1127|1444||9600|11715||23886|
|**Women’s household decision- making**||||||||
|**autonomy**||||||||
|_Autonomy over healthcare_|50|44|-6***|50|49|-1||
|_Autonomy over major household purchases_|39|41|2**|44|50|6***||
|_Autonomy over visits to friends and family_|52|49|-3*|62|58|-4***||
|N|1127|1443||9596|11711||23877|
|**Women’s earnings decision-making**|89|92|3***|84|89|5***||
|**autonomy**||||||||
|N|1039|1383||7449|10823||20694|

Source: Authors own calculation using data from the 2008 and 2013 Nigerian Demographic and Health Survey Note: *** Difference in means between before BH and during BH is significant at the 1% level. ** Difference in means between before BH and during BH is significant at the 5% level. * Difference in means between before BH and during BH is significant at the 10% level.

The proportions of women with decision-making autonomy changes during the BH insurgency in both the BH affected areas and the non-BH areas. However, there is not a systematic pattern of decreased decision-making autonomy in the BH affected areas compared to the non BH areas. In both areas, autonomy over health care decisions and autonomy over decisions to visit friends and family decreases and autonomy over major household decisions and disposition of earnings increases. Reductions in autonomy over health care decisions are greater in the BH area than the non BH area (6 percentage points vs 1 percentage point) but there is little difference between the BH and non BH areas in the reductions in autonomy over visits to friends and family. The increase in the proportion of women who have autonomy over major household purchases is larger in the non BH areas than the BH areas (6 percentage points vs 2 percentage points). Finally, the increase in the proportion of women having earnings decision-making autonomy is lower in the BH area than in the non-BH area (3 percentage vs. 5 percentage points).

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We examine the impact of the BH insurgency on the key drivers of IPV by estimating the DD model in equation (1) on the common support of the matched sample, using controlling behavior by husband/partner, an index of women’s household decision-making autonomy and women’s earnings decision-making autonomy as the outcome variables (Table 6).

After controlling for individual and household characteristics, attitudes to and experiences of IPV, ethnicity, religion and state fixed effects, the BH insurgency increases the probability of women’s 19