Gender Altruism and Attitudes Towards Violence against Women

We construct measures of gender altruism, or the propensity of an equal allocation towards the other gender, in a series of dictator and ultimatum games. We compare different types of fishing societies in rural Tanzania, and find (a) systematically lower levels of gender altruism in lake-fishing villages compared to sea-fishing villages, and (b) a higher tendency for participants in lake-fishing villages to justify violence against women. Our findings provide experimental evidence supporting the idea that differences in cultural norms about gender equality shape individual attitudes towards violence against women