In response to the Senate Inquiry into family, domestic and sexual violence, this is the second in a three-part series on how policy responses could be more effective in keeping women and children safe. Today’s analysis, written by Madeleine Ulbrick (@maddyulbrick) of Good Shepherd Australia New Zealand (@goodadvocacy), highlights the relationship between women’s physical security and financial independence, identifying that unlocking financial independence is a critical step to both prevention and protection from violence. This post is drawn from Good Shepherd’s submission to the Inquiry. Part one of this series can be accessed here: A multi-disciplinary response to family violence - building communities of action.

The current Senate Inquiry was established following the arson deaths of Hannah Clarke and her three children perpetrated by ex-husband Rowan Baxter. The need for the Inquiry was prompted by the fact that the murder-suicide occurred despite the imposition of a domestic violence protection order. Evidence also emerged that the relationship was characterised by Baxter’s use of coercive control.

Underscoring the current Inquiry was the desire to better understand and respond to the complexity of family violence in all its forms, including driving factors which may not yet be fully realised in law, policy and service system responses.

Why don’t women leave?

We know that financial dependency traps women. It is a key aspect of coercive control.

Current policies to support women leaving domestic and family violence don’t acknowledge the key role that economic security plays in keeping women and children safe. Photo by Richard Sagredo on Unsplash

The fundamental structures of society – insofar as the way we live, work, arrange our finances, and care for children and older people – produce women’s financial vulnerability. Women are more likely than men to take time out of the workforce for caring responsibilities, they are more highly represented in insecure work, feminised labour (such as care work) is poorly remunerated, and women retire with lower lifetime accumulated superannuation savings. Perpetrators exploit this financial vulnerability and dependency.

Women are also worse off financially post-separation, for decades, which makes it difficult, if not impossible, to leave. This is in addition to the sheer lack of affordable, appropriate, safe and ongoing tenancy options available to women fleeing violence.

The recent ban on van-camping in city regions removes another option that women often use when fleeing violence – sleeping in vehicles. Instead, it is increasing vulnerable people’s interactions with the criminal justice system.

Financial insecurity means there are limited options for women to leave a violent relationship, and that is without considering that the post-separation period is often the most dangerous time for women and children. The deaths of Hannah Clarke and her three children as they attempted to break free from the violence in their lives tragically illustrate the risks.

The Inquiry provides an opportunity to enhance our understanding of how coercive control heightens risk, and to reorient the existing risk frameworks to better reflect the real risk in women’s everyday lives.

Economic abuse increases the risk in women’s lives.

Economic abuse, as a core tactic of coercive control, almost always co-occurs with other forms of violence, such as physical and/or sexual. Often the violence is serious, ongoing and life-threatening. Yet it is not understood in a way that reflects the risk posed. Economic abuse is often minimised, trivialised, or treated as a less serious form of family violence – for example, viewed as a family law issue rather than an indicator of serious risk. It is insufficient on its own to form the basis of an intervention order.

However, coercive control is a known predictor of escalating violence, including lethal violence. Economic abuse, as a central tactic of coercive control, must be viewed in the same light.

Because of the enduring focus on singular acts of acute physical violence, very often victims/survivors themselves are unaware that they have experienced economic abuse.

Economic abuse is also one of the main forms of violence that can begin or continue following separation, as the parties often remain financially entangled with shared custody arrangements, jointly-owned property, and, commonly, joint liability to debt. There are limited legal mechanisms for resolving family violence-related debt.

This means women are unable to untether themselves from a violent partner. Even when women do escape, they are often left solely responsible for debts accrued in their name, yet without the asset/s. Such abuse results in poor credit histories, debt cycles, exposure to predatory and unethical debt recovery practices, poverty, homelessness and heightened risk of serious injury and death in the context of returning to the violent relationship.

There is a genuine opportunity to take radical measures to improve the picture for women. Reducing violence against women requires us to refocus our attention on creating financial security and independence for women and girls.

This necessitates a whole-of-society response, including a role for government, corporate, financial and community sectors, [see previous blog post here].

Our submission makes specific recommendations on how this can be achieved. Not least, it asks for:

consideration of a mechanism to ensure mandatory responses from the financial services sector;
an investment in up-to-date and targeted training to identify, prevention and respond to family violence;
a review of internal hardship policies with a view to implementing practices that collaborate with financial counsellors in the provision of trauma informed responses; and
the introduction of a national risk tool for the financial services sector, which would go a long way in supporting the identification and response to this form of abuse.

We also need to make fundamental shifts in our understanding of abuse, which starts with the inclusion of a nationally consistent definition of economic abuse into legislation—including in New South Wales, which remains the only state with no definition of economic abuse.

Beyond understanding economic abuse and the escalating risk it creates in women’s lives

Much more needs to be done to address economic inequality as the driving factor in economic abuse and family violence. Gendered disadvantage both enables and facilitates the prevalence of violence against women and their children. This includes such inequalities as gendered differences in precarious employment, unequally distributed care responsibilities, disparity in the superannuation system and an insecure social safety net.

As the UN recently warned, because of COVID-19 even the limited gains made in the past decades towards improving gender equality are at risk of being rolled back.

The Inquiry must consider the credible evidence that family violence increases following disasters and that post-disaster recovery efforts tend to deepen gender inequality for women; this has lasting consequences for women’s financial independence. Importantly, the Inquiry must recognise that the issues of family violence and gender inequality are inseparable.

The roadmap for an integrated, multi-disciplinary and multi-platformed response to family violence has been well-lit. It demands a re-reading of risk, and ongoing funding to ensure the response is well-resourced. Committing the necessary funding will ensure women and children’s security.

Part one of this series can be accessed here: A multi-disciplinary response to family violence - building communities of action.

This post is part of the Women's Policy Action Tank initiative to analyse government policy using a gendered lens. View our other policy analysis pieces here.

Posted by @SusanMaury

Women’s physical security cannot be achieved without securing their financial independence