Abstract: Our research bridges scholarship on the Digital Revolution and gender inequalities to interrogate how the spread of high-speed internet impacts gender-based violence (GBV) in Mexico. While global diffusion scholarship suggests that internet-based media would spread gender-egalitarian ideals, including the condemnation of violence against women, recent studies posit that these platforms may also promote the normalization of GBV and the formation of misogynistic peer networks. To examine these hypotheses, we leverage the temporal and geographic variation in the growth of 3G and 4G internet across Mexican municipalities between 2015 and 2020. Moreover, we investigate experiences of GBV not only among intimate partners but also perpetrated by other family members. Our analysis combines household survey data from Mexico's National Survey on the Dynamics of Household Relationships (ENDIREH) with time-varying georeferenced information on 3G/4G access. Two modelling strategies are employed: (i) two-way fixed effects by municipality and year; and (ii) a difference-in-differences design. Our findings show that respondents who were exposed to high growth in high-speed internet experienced a decrease in the likelihood of emotional and physical violence perpetrated by family members. No significant effects were found in the case of violence perpetrated by intimate partners. This study contributes to an emerging body of work documenting how the internet and social media are shaping family lives.
Bio: Daniela Urbina is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Southern California. She studies family demography, gender inequality, education, and quantitative methods. Before joining USC, she was a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science at the University of Oxford. She completed her Ph.D. in Sociology and Social Policy at Princeton University.
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