In the wake of the COVID-19 crisis, the United Nations (UN) identified what it called a “shadow pandemic” of domestic violence against women. The UN includes in its definition of domestic violence what it refers to as “economic violence,” which it explains as: “making or attempting to make a person financially dependent by maintaining total control over financial resources, withholding access to money, and/or forbidding attendance at school or employment.”
I studied economic violence in India, where periods of social distancing and lockdowns broke out. This not only provided relief in safe areas for women and girls, but also trapped them in an area where they were more easily exploited economically. My research suggests that the COVID lockdowns have spawned a whole new type of economic abuse against women in India.
Economic abuse tends to involve controlling and coercive behavior by a woman’s partner and sometimes their in-laws or other family members, threatening her economic security and potential for self-sufficiency. While economic abuse can take many forms, there are three main types: sabotage, restriction and exploitation.
Sabotage usually involves interfering in a woman’s access to money or in their work. Restriction is about controlling how women use money. And exploitation most often means a male partner or relative living off a woman, or insisting all debts go in her name.
My previous studies have revealed unique forms of abuse rooted in expressed socio-cultural practices in India. For example, streedhan exploitation (jewelry and movable or immovable property given to a woman before her marriage) and dowry practices (money and gifts demanded through the groom and in-laws at the time and after marriage) have become known as a common form of economic abuse in South Asian marriages. If a woman lives with her husband’s circle of relatives, the circle of relatives can control her property or source of income. income when several generations live together.
As part of our studies in a city in Bihar, India’s third most populous state in the east of the country, we produced a 20-minute documentary: Spent: Fighting Economic Abuse in India, featuring five of the 76 women we spoke to. Two were still mothers with dependent children. We found that economic abuse is not unusual, regardless of class, caste, religion, schooling, or professional status.
One woman we feature, Nitya, wasn’t allowed to work by her family. Instead she was forced to perform domestic chores around the clock. This typically included being required to cook seven or eight courses at dinner. At the same time, her husband mocked her for not working. Nitya told us he’d say, “You don’t work, what’s the point of your education?”
Some abusive husbands also refused to pay space stay expenses similar to those for women and children, especially girls. Another of our interviewees, Nilu, told us how her husband refused to pay medical expenses similar to those of their daughter’s birth and tried to force her to return. checkered with a one-month-old baby. She was forced to stay at her mother’s house to seek help.
Zubaida’s husband would get angry whenever she asked him for money to buy basic necessities, while spending a large amount of money on his own clothes and shoes.
In addition, these women reported abuses rooted in cultural practices, such as dowry demands. Nilu told us that her husband pretended he wasn’t getting paid and made her father pay for everything that happened in their house. Her father agreed to ensure that Nilu was not evicted from her marital home.
Our interviews recommend that abuse by abusive men toward their wives has tended to worsen the pandemic. And specific cases related to COVID-related restrictions have enabled a new bureaucracy of economic abuse against women, given the specific cases of lockdown.
The pandemic has given abusive men new tactics to abuse their wives’ finances. During lockdown – and with the isolation that came with it – a family’s finances have become dependent on access to the web, often through shared cell phones.
One of the women we spoke to, Lakshmi, a senior corporate employee, said she had a duty to keep her customers’ data confidential. Lakshmi told us that her husband not only took her banking and social media passwords, but also controlled her WhatsApp account, which she used to talk to her teammates. He started impersonating her online and insulting her boss, which got her into serious trouble.
Several other women told us that their male relatives had their credentials to empty their bank accounts. The women also said that loans had been obtained in their names, but that they themselves did not have access to cash.
Lockdown has made it less difficult for women to access their groups, adding their families. Nitya told us that she was beaten by her husband, who did not allow her to communicate with her parents.
Indian law recognises economic abuse in its Domestic Violence Prevention Act of 2005. It includes the deprivation of all economic and monetary resources and the restriction of shared family resources, as well as the exploitation of women’s own assets, such as their jewellery and other valuables. But official understanding of economic violence and its effects on women remains incredibly weak, both at the government level and among practitioners and service providers.
This is a serious problem. Economic violence has a massive effect on the physical and intellectual well-being of women and has also been shown to have an effect on the physical condition and well-being of children.
To address economic abuse, there’s an urgent need to have open conversations about money in families and challenge ideas around masculinity and money. More importantly, policy makers and practitioners need to work together to address the role of the state, market and community institutions in facilitating economic abuse by reinforcing gender norms, including in financial transactions.
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