Breaking the cycle – exposing and confronting the ties between gender-based violence and economic injustice

It’s the definition of a vicious cycle. Gender-based violence has dire financial consequences for women in all their diversities. Equally, threats to women’s economic rights make them more vulnerable to violence – in every space they occupy. Precarious employment and time-poverty can make it more difficult for women to get out of abusive circumstances, limiting their access to resources, support systems, and autonomy. As a result, both the workplace and home can become sites of abuse. This is amplified for those belonging to groups exposed to additional discrimination, such as women of colour, disabled women, LBTQIA+ women, and indigenous women. Abuse at home limits women’s earning potential, hindering their ability to retain and progress in work, and so the cycle continues. To help break it, we must call for strong action from governments and champion transformative feminist movements battling to challenge regressive gender norms.  

A broken system – and violent consequences at work 

Let’s start with the global economic system, which is renowned for prioritising profit over people. States privatise services to cut costs, encouraged to do so to pay their debts by the International Finance Institutions holding the purse strings. Without adequate childcare and other public services, women (who shoulder more than three quarters of the world’s unpaid care and domestic work) often turn to work flexible enough to fit around their care needs. But, lacking proper protections, they face abuse and harassment in the workplace. We desperately need a system that centres care and promotes equality between people of all genders. 

In the informal sector (which makes up nearly 60% of women’s employment globally and more than 90% in the Majority World) women are particularly at risk of abuse from employers, customers, and even authorities due to the lack of laws and regulations to protect them. For those choosing or forced into sex work, discrimination and human rights violations are common, including arbitrary arrests and violence from state agents and clients. With stigma persisting, and continued criminalisation of their work in many places, it is harder for them to report crimes, and they are likely to face regressive attitudes and victim blaming (“She deserved it”, “What did she expect?”) if they do. Outside of informal employment, for those working in underpaid sectors serving the public, such as health services (where women make up 67% of the workforce), the risk of violence from those they are working to help is high. Comprehensive workplace protections and support for movements working to shift regressive attitudes is essential.  

Violence at home – and the economic barriers to escape 

The violence does not stop at work. Time-poor from juggling paid work and the lion’s share of care and domestic tasks, many women find it hard to escape abusive home situations. For those in precarious employment, the lack of guaranteed income can make the decision to leave even more daunting. For disabled women, barriers to leaving dangerous situations are multiplied. Similarly, women from racial and ethnic minorities, LBTQIA+ individuals, migrants, and those living in poverty face additional challenges that increase their vulnerability and limit their options for safety and support.  

The disproportionate impact of global crises like climate change and corporate abuse also plays a role. In Uganda, where women are more likely to farm but not own land, land grabs by corporations or devastation caused by climate change disproportionately leave women without livelihoods and accommodation. This leaves those facing abusive situations with limited options to get out. Womankind partner, NAPE, continues to do vital work to support women to claim their legal rights to land, gain compensation when it is taken, and resist male dominance.  

Where women find themselves the main earner in a household, this disruption of patriarchal norms can also have violent repercussions. For example, women receiving microfinance loans have faced intimate partner violence and financial abuse through control of their incomes.  

Reduced earning potential – a hidden impact of violence  

Such violence at home impacts women’s ability to secure and retain work, affecting attendance, performance, and access to studies or training to progress. The toll of enduring often life-endangering violence frequently negatively affects women’s mental health, which can further intensify difficulties with working outside the home. The impact on women’s earning potential arises in their online lives too. Coercive control of women’s online activities can limit their access to job opportunities and training. And amidst an alarming and rising backlash to gender equality worldwide, tech-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV) is rampant, with nearly 65 per cent of women having experienced it, as highlighted in Womankind’s TFGBV briefing. Among its many negative impacts, TFGBV can limit women’s earning potential online through making spaces feel inaccessible and unsafe. Meanwhile, as highlighted in Womankind’s briefing on violence against women in politics, 80% of women parliamentarians across Africa have experienced psychological violence online—a reality which could stop many women considering a career in leadership.  

Breaking the cycle 

The vicious cycle must stop. To help women claim their economic rights and live lives free from violence so they can pursue their dreams and feel safe in every space, we call for: 

• Support for feminist and women’s rights movements and investment in gender-transformative education to challenge oppressive, patriarchal gender norms and tackle gender-based violence. 

• States’ ratification and implementation of International Labor Organization Convention 190 to stop abuse and harassment at work.  

• Strengthened legislation and enforcement against all forms of violence against women, including TFGBV, taking into account a diverse and intersectional range of perspectives and experiences. 

• Progressive taxation to fund publicly owned and run services and the recognition, reward and redistribution of care work.   

Alexandra Webber is Policy and Advocacy Manager, Women’s Economic Rights at Womankind Worldwide.