Violence against women and economic independence

Abstract

Economic independence and fighting gender-based violence are two key priorities in the 2016-19 Strategic Engagement for Gender Equality. Studies assessing economic and health implications of gender-based violence have been undertaken nationally in some Member States as well as for the EU as a whole. Fewer and less representative studies look at the issue the other way round, namely at how women’s own financial independence and the broader economic conditions she, her partner and her household face impinge on violence. The present report addresses this knowledge gap. The first part of the report undertakes a specialised literature review with the twin objectives of identifying key issues regarding economic independence and violence, as well as choosing theoretical perspectives to guide investigation on these issues. The review discusses selected contributions covering European and a few other countries –mainly Canada and the USA– published in the past quarter century. While several key issues emerge from the review, and a number of results are consistent across countries and time, a certain fragmentation and inconsistency of findings makes available knowledge unsatisfactory for evidence-based policy, especially at European level. The second part of the report conducts an extensive empirical investigation using the recently released FRA survey data on violence against women (http://dx.doi. org/10.5255/UKDA-SN-7730-1). The survey was conducted in 2012 by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) and the results were published in 2014. It is based on face-to-face interviews with 42,000 women randomly selected across the 28 Member States. This empirical investigation in Part 2 is the first EU-wide attempt to address the possible influence of economic independence on violence against women (VAW). It covers physical, sexual and psychological violence against women, as well as sexual harassment: practically all types of violence against women except violence ending in murder, stalking and violence against children. A common set of indicators of economic independence and other explanatory variables is used to account for prevalence and frequency of abuse across the spectrum of violence. The analysis also shares a common set of statistical and econometric tools.