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Recent studies demonstrate that female leaders can improve gender-specific outcomes along multiple dimensions through better provision of public goods and legislative changes that benefit women. Using quasi-random exposure to female leaders elected to state legislatures in India, this paper shows that there may also be an unintended effect: an increase in rural women's reported experience of physical spousal abuse. We find that a plausible channel underlying this effect is an increase in women's modern contraceptive use-potentially resulting from improvements in public provision of health services-which leads to marital conflict, especially when the husband's son preference is stronger than the wife's.

Intimate partner violence.