1. Economic Security for Survivors of Domestic and Family Violence:
Understanding and measuring the impact
Research Summary
Women’s Policy Forum
August 2016

2. Overview About Good Shepherd Australia New Zealand
Background to the project
Economic security
The indicators
Recommendations

3. About GSANZ
Our purpose is to disrupt the intergenerational cycle of disadvantage, with a focus on women and girls.
We achieve this by providing community-based programs and services that support women and children to:
build their safety and resilience,
increase their access to education opportunities and
improve their financial security.
Our values of reconciliation, zeal, justice, audacity and the value of each person guide us in the work we do. 

4. Background to the project
Links between family and domestic violence and economic insecurity need further examination
Improved understanding of the extent of the problem
A measurement tool to track progress

5. Convergence of gendered disadvantage
Domestic and Family Violence
Economic Insecurity
Economic Security for Survivors

6. What is economic security?
Economic security for women is ensuring women and their children have sufficient economic resources to meet their material needs so that they can live with dignity. This can be through access to appropriate and well paid work; adequate social protection including basic needs infrastructure for health, education, dwelling, information and a social wage; reasonable costs of living; the capacity to absorb financial shocks; and the resources to maintain this standard over their life course.
I thought I would start by explaining the origins of the program and its evolution.
Women's economic security for Good Shepherd is:
ensuring women and their children have sufficient economic resources to meet their material needs so that they can live with dignity. This can be through access to appropriate and well paid work; adequate social protection including basic needs infrastructure for health, education, dwelling, information and a social wage; reasonable costs of living; the capacity to absorb financial shocks; and the resources to maintain this standard over their life course.
This definition reflects a “capabilities approach” and recognises the gendered nature of the issue being investigated.
Economic insecurity is a gendered issue .
As well as the gendered nature of family violence, economic insecurity is also a gendered problem. In Australia, women experience poorer economic outcomes than men and this is consistent throughout their life course. These inequities include:
lower levels of workforce participation
lower levels of pay
higher experiences of financial stress
reduced retirement savings.
Issues converge to make it a particularly tricky problem

7. Economic Security

8. Links between FV and economic insecurity
Survivors of family violence experience:
More women than men experience domestic and family violence, and men are more likely to be perpetrators:
A woman dies at the hands of a current or former partner almost every week in Australia
One in three women has experienced physical violence, since the age of 15
One in five women has experienced sexual violence
One in four women has experienced emotional abuse by a current or former partner
Women in Australia are three times more likely than men to experience violence at the hands of a partner (87% of perps are men according to Access Economics)
This compounds women’s relative disadvantage.
People who experience domestic and family violence are more likely to encounter issues such as poor credit records, challenges in maintaining employment and reliance on income support as their primary source of income (Sharp, 2008). This is particularly true when economic abuse has been part of the pattern of violence. This relationship means many survivors do not have the economic resources to leave violence, or if they do leave, they lack the resources to maintain an adequate standard of living post-separation.
Economic abuse is defined as behaviours that “control a woman’s ability to acquire, use, and maintain economic resources, thus threatening her economic security and potential for self-sufficiency”

9. Economic Security for Survivors: What we know
Social isolation, loss of self-esteem, psychological and emotional impacts hinder efforts to find and retain paid work (Moe and Bell, 2004)
Preventing economic participation is a form of family violence (Corrie and McGuire, 2013)
$2.1 billion in lost productivity (Price Waterhouse Coopers, 2015)
Withholding of assets, financial control common form of economic abuse (Camilleri, Corrie and Moore, 2014)
Needing to be safe often means needing to ‘start again’ financially
Domestic and family violence is the leading cause of homelessness for women (AIHW, 2014)

11. Proposed measures: Sufficient economic resources
Indicator 1: Survivors’ workforce and/or education participation before, during and after violence; and current participation levels compared to population-wide data.
Indicator 2: Survivors’ income levels before, during and after experiencing domestic and family violence; and current income levels compared to full-time equivalent earnings and relative to a poverty line (such as the Henderson poverty line).

12. Proposed measures: Material needs
Indicator 3: Survivors’ experience of economic deprivation before, during and after experiencing domestic and family violence; and current experiences of economic deprivation relative to population averages.
Indicator 4: Cost of Living Index for Survivors compared to broader population.
Indicator 5: Survivors’ experience of housing stress before, during and after experiencing domestic and family violence; and current housing stress levels compared to population averages.

13. Proposed measures: Life events
Indicator 6: Number of survivors reliant on Income Support before, during and after experiencing domestic and family violence.
Indicator 7: Adequacy of income support based on comparisons to poverty lines.
Indicator 8: Survivors’ financial literacy and money confidence before, during and after experiencing domestic and family violence; and current levels of financial literacy compared to population averages.

14. Proposed measures: Life events
Indicator 9: Survivors’ financial inclusion before, during and after violence; and current financial inclusion levels compared to population averages.
Indicator 10: Survivors’ economic resources before during and after experiencing violence, and current economic resources compared to population averages.

15. Proposed measures: Life course
Indicator 11: Survivors’ superannuation balances compared to other average amounts for same age bracket.

16. Recommendations - Policy
Economic insecurity remain on the agenda when developing responses to domestic and family violence
A structural analysis of domestic and family violence continues to be adopted, which recognises the systemic factors, including economic and social inequality that drives domestic and family violence.
Service responses include financial support and economic capacity building as a way of supporting women and children to remain safe from domestic and family violence.
Economic needs of survivors of domestic and family violence are taken into account along the continuum of support intervention – from prevention of domestic and family violence through to post-crisis support.

17. Recommendations – Data collection
More focus groups are conducted to test the indicators and data collection method measurements and to recruit people to participate in the survey.
Consideration be given to paying participants for their involvement in the survey.
Consent to participate in a survey be obtained from survivors accessing support, and these interviews be done over the phone instead of opting in.
Greater involvement of stakeholders earlier on in the data collection through roundtables and meetings to enable improvement in the number of participants completing the survey.
The survey remain opened as an ongoing data collection instrument over 12 months to enable sufficient numbers for data analysis.

18. References
Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) (2014) “Specialist Homelessness Services , Australian Government, Canberra
Camilleri, O; Corrie, T; and Moore, S (2014) “Restoring Financial Safety: Legal responses to economic abuse” Good Shepherd Australia New Zealand and Wyndham Legal Service
Corrie, Tanya and McGuire, Magdalena (2013) “Economic abuse: Searching for solutions,” Good Shepherd Youth and Family Service
Moe, Angela M., and Bell, Myrtle P (2004) “Abject Economics: The Effects of Battering on Women’s Work and Employability.” Violence Against Women, 10(1):
Price Waterhouse Coopers (PWC) (2015) “A high price to pay: The economic case for preventing violence against women,” PWC
I thought I would start by explaining the origins of the program and its evolution.
Women's economic security for Good Shepherd is:
ensuring women and their children have sufficient economic resources to meet their material needs so that they can live with dignity. This can be through access to appropriate and well paid work; adequate social protection including basic needs infrastructure for health, education, dwelling, information and a social wage; reasonable costs of living; the capacity to absorb financial shocks; and the resources to maintain this standard over their life course.
This definition reflects a “capabilities approach” and recognises the gendered nature of the issue being investigated.
Economic insecurity is a gendered issue .
As well as the gendered nature of family violence, economic insecurity is also a gendered problem. In Australia, women experience poorer economic outcomes than men and this is consistent throughout their life course. These inequities include:
lower levels of workforce participation
lower levels of pay
higher experiences of financial stress
reduced retirement savings.
Issues converge to make it a particularly tricky problem