This paper studies the effect of civil conflict on domestic violence using newly matched
data from Rwanda. I combine data on local participation in the conflict and victimization
with a household survey collected after the genocide. The data provide no evidence that
the genocide increased domestic violence for the overall population, but I find a positive,
large and robust effect for women who married after the mass killings. This result
suggests that the genocide might have affected the marriage market. I discuss and test
potential mechanisms for this finding. I find that the genocide decreased women’s
decision-making power but had no effect on match quality measured by the husband’s
educational attainment. The decline in the sex ratio, likely resulting from the genocide,
increased domestic violence and decreased women’s decision-making power within the
household, consistent with the theory that a lower sex ratio decreases women’s relative
well-being within the marriage. The findings do not support the alternative hypothesis
that the genocide led to an increase in men’s propensity to perpetrate domestic violence.