Women’s economic security and safety are inextricably linked. Sadly, this is something that today’s National Summit on Women’s Safety isn’t inviting submissions on and it’s my belief that this is a major mistake.
While financial professionals, counsellors, and financial literacy organisations, including Financy we are not front-line health workers, we are on the front line when it comes to being in contact with women and children) who are victims of both financial and domestic abuse.
Financial hardship and coercive controls are among the main reasons why women find it hard to break the cycle of abuse. Often an abusive perpetrator seeks to cut the victim off from having contact with friends, family and support services
In my opinion, to address domestic abuse without addressing the economic security of women and the channels they may access to escape abuse long-term, is a fundamental mistake – the two are inextricably linked.
It’s a view shared by many, including a collective of Victorian organisations advocating for women’s rights and wellbeing—including WIRE, Equality Rights Alliance, Fitted for Work, Gender Equity Victoria, Multicultural Centre Women’s Health, Centre for Women’s Economic Safety and Equity Economics — all of whom are today calling on the Commonwealth Government to address women’s economic security as part of the recently announced National Plan to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children.
Over the next two days, the National Summit will focus on a number of critical areas with the program broken into topics, including finance. However this is not an area where discussion or submissions have been requested.
Regardless, Financy is arguing that to support the long-term recovery and freedom for women from domestic abuse, finance must be a focus and we have proposed the following as a starting point.
- Government financial funding or recognition is given to financial capability programs, which support the immediate and long-term recovery of female victims of abuse by ensuring that low cost and free services like that provided by Financy continue.
- Financial capability and Women’s financial security programs are encouraged to work collaboratively with health services such as counsellors to help break the cycle of domestic and financial abuse.
- Women who are victims of abuse are given grants to access free or low-cost financial counselling services or initiatives that they can access with discretion to help them break the cycle of abuse.
Furthermore, as we have stated earlier, addressing domestic abuse without addressing the economic security of women long-term is a mistake – the two are inextricably linked. We therefore make the following recommendations.
Challenging Gender Dynamics in Education (financial literacy and domestic violence)
- Financial literacy programs to be mandatory and encouraged in early high school years before the age where young people can start work, such as 15 years.
- In addition, a compulsory national careers program across secondary schools with the aim of challenging gender stereotypes, raising awareness around pay outcomes, the importance of financial independence, awareness of financial abuse, and future proofing careers by looking at the jobs and skills needed for tomorrow.
- Anti-domestic violence programs in line with anti-bullying programs in schools. We need to teach greater gender respect in schools and try to break the cycle of domestic violence against women and children.
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