The research in each country is facilitated and implemented by local institutions, experts in the national context as well as in research implementation.

National University of Ireland Galway

The Centre for Global Women’s Studies at NUI Galway, part of the School of Sociology and Political Science, is committed to the development of gender-focused research across a range of issues and disciplines.

Principal Investigator

Dr. Nata Duvvury, Principal Investigator, Senior Lecturer/Director, Centre for Global Women’s Studies, National University of Ireland, Galway

NUI Galway Team Members

• Dr. Srinivas Raghavendra, Lecturer, School of Economics, NUI Galway
• Dr. Diarmuid O’Donovan, Senior Lecturer, School of Medicine, NUI Galway
• Dr. Stacey Scriver, Post-Doctoral Researcher and Project Coordinator, Global Women’s Studies, NUI Galway
• Ms. Sinead Ashe, Post-Doctoral Researcher and Project Coordinator, Global Women’s Studies, NUI Galway
• Ms. Carol Ballantine, PhD candidate, Global Women’s Studies, NUI Galway
• Mr. Muhammad Sabir, PhD candidate, Global Women’s Studies, NUI Galway

Ipsos Mori

Ipsos is amongst the best known and most highly respected research organisations in the world, with a global presence across 86 countries. Each year Ipsos conducts research in more than 120 countries, working across national offices and with tried and tested local partners in-country. Ipsos is known for the quality of its research solutions and ability to offer first-class, robust and insightful findings.

Team Members, London Office

• Sara Grant-Vest, Director of International Social Research
• John Kennedy, Associate Director,

International Center for Research On Women

The International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) is a private, non-profit organization with a mission to empower women, advance gender equality and fight poverty in the developing world. To accomplish this, ICRW works with partners worldwide to conduct empirical research, provide technical services, build capacity and advocate for evidence-based, practical ways to improve policies and programmes.

Team Members

• Dr. Gina Alvarado: Sociologist, Violence Rights and Inclusion
• Jennifer Mueller: Program Associate, Violence Rights and Inclusion

Pakistan

Social Policy and Development Centre (SPDC)
Established in 1995, the Social Policy and Development Centre (SPDC), a non-profit research think tank, has made a significant intellectual contribution in placing issues of pro-poor growth and social development on Pakistan's policy-making agenda. SPDC focuses on four key areas for research and analysis: macroeconomy and public finance; poverty; gender; and governance. The Centre provides technical guidance to the government to adopt gender responsive budgeting at all levels.

Project Lead: Prof. Khalida Ghaus

Ghana

The Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research (ISSER)
ISSER currently serves as the research wing under the College of Humanities, University of Ghana and engages in a number of policy relevant research whose findings are intended to help policy makers on the best policy decisions to make for national development. The Institute produces the annual State of the Ghanaian Economy report, as well as a series of peer-reviewed technical publications.

Project Lead: Prof Felix Asante

South Sudan

Dr. Khalifa Elmusharaf is a Senior Lecturer in Public Health at University of Limerick. He has more than fifteen years of experience as obstetrician, researcher, project manager, lecturer and health system specialist in academia, ministries of health, and International organizations. He is a consultant in public health, biostatistics, and research methods, with experience in community based initiatives, participatory ethnographic evaluation & research, innovative qualitative research, and community readiness assessment.

Project Lead: Dr. Khalifa Elmusharaf

Project description

The linkages between violence against women and girls and economic outcomes are relatively clear at the theoretical level; however, there is a lack of comprehensive estimates of the economic and social impacts of VAWG that can capture direct tangible, direct intangible and indirect tangible costs at the household, business, community and national level. Further, there is a need for more standardized guidance to measuring economic and social costs particularly in low and middle income countries. Through this project, we aim to fill these gaps.  The project led by NUI Galway, in collaboration with Ipsos MORI and ICRW takes a multi-disciplinary, mixed methods approach that integrates quantitative and qualitative research with innovative economic analysis to derive social and economic costs of violence against women and girls (VAWG) in three fragile, conflict affected and/or low-middle income states. By guiding public policy, empirical research and evidence on the economic and social costs of VAWG will strengthen the argument for resources to implement laws, provide health and social support services and to mobilize communities to shift the social norms that underpin VAWG.

Rationale for costing studies

The primary objectives of this work is to generate knowledge and evidence on the economic and social costs of violence against women and girls to be used to inform policies and to advance the frontier in quantitative and qualitative research methods.

           Strong evidence on the economic and social costs of violence against women is crucial to underscore the significant consequences of inaction. Evidence on the wide-ranging economic and social costs can influence governments, donors, NGOs and the private sector to increase investment, strengthen global and national policy and improve collaboration to address violence against women and girls.

There are an increasing number of studies that show that violence against women places significant burdens on individuals, governments and economies, including a 2003 report from the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention that estimates that the costs of intimate partner violence in the United States alone exceeded USD 5.8 billion per year while a more recent study conducted in Australia in 2009 by the National Council to Reduce Violence, in collaboration with KPMG, estimated that violence against women and their children cost the Australian economy an estimated $13.6 billion in that year alone. A number of developing and middle-income countries have also conducted costing exercises of violence, including Fiji, Macedonia, Uganda, Nicaragua and Chile, and Vietnam using various methodologies.

There is growing interest to estimate the socio-economic impact of violence against women in many parts of the world. In Fiji, a costing exercise completed by the University of the South Pacific (USP) concluded that family violence cost the government $498 million FJD in 2011 and in Vietnam a costing study on domestic violence against women estimated the loss of productivity, out-of-pocket expenditures, and foregone income for households came to about 3.19% of GDP.

Strong evidence on the economic and social costs of violence against women is crucial to underscore the significant consequences of inaction. Evidence on the wide-ranging economic and social costs can influence governments, donors, NGOs and the private sector to increase investment, strengthen global and national policy and improve collaboration to address violence against women and girls.