In terms of socio-cultural factors, in patriarchal contexts women’s empowerment is more likely to lead to increased conflict and IPV at least in the short term. Hence, the relative status of women and men in terms of decision-making and how their power and resources compare to each other is an important contributing factor for increased IPV (Hughes et al 2015). This seems especially common in situations where a man is unable to fulfil his gender-ascribed role as "bread-w inner” and a w'oman is beginning to contribute relatively more to family maintenance, or where a woman takes a job that defies prevailing social convention (Hughes et al.,