GENDER-BASED VIOLENCE AND ECONOMIC ABUSE – Monica Caruso

Gender-Based Violence as a Social and Public Health Issue

Gender-based violence is not merely a serious issue of legal civilization and respect for fundamental human rights; it is, first and foremost, a significant social problem that affects families, social classes, generations, and communities across the board. It does not belong to a single context, nor can it be attributed exclusively to specific economic, cultural, or environmental conditions. Rather, it permeates the entire social fabric, frequently emerging within the most silent, ordinary, and unsuspected spaces of everyday life.

According to the World Health Organization, violence against women also constitutes a major public health issue, as it profoundly and enduringly affects the victim’s physical, psychological, relational, and social well-being. Its consequences extend far beyond the immediately perceptible harmful event, projecting themselves over time and compromising the survivor’s ability to rebuild trust, autonomy, safety, self-determination, and full participation in social life.

Precisely because violence is often situated within the family, cohabitation, or intimate relationship, it assumes a particularly complex legal, psychological, and evidentiary dimension. The emotional or familial bond between perpetrator and victim may generate silence, fear, dependency, isolation, and obstacles to disclosure. Many women refrain from reporting abuse due to fear of retaliation, revenge, social stigmatization, loss of credibility, or repercussions involving their children. In this regard, the explicit or implicit threat of removing, alienating, or instrumentalizing children remains one of the most powerful psychological mechanisms of pressure and control exercised by abusive partners.

Risk Assessment and the Prevention of Recidivism

Risk assessment occupies a central role in combating gender-based violence. It consists of a professional and technical process aimed at understanding the dynamics of previously occurring events, estimating the likelihood of repeated aggressive conduct, and enabling timely, proportionate, and effective interventions designed to prevent further harm. Every professional, social worker, healthcare provider, legal practitioner, or institutional actor involved in managing cases of violence should therefore have access to appropriate, shared, and scientifically grounded methodological tools.

Assessing risk means determining whether specific critical factors are present that may increase the likelihood of recidivism. This includes examining the nature of prior abusive conduct, its frequency and severity, any escalation patterns, the presence of threats, access to or possession of weapons, substance abuse, the perpetrator’s personal and relational history, any prior propensity toward violence, and the individual’s capacity to recognize the seriousness of their actions and genuinely engage in accountability and rehabilitation programmes.

These factors may be divided into static and dynamic categories. Static factors relate to historical elements that are difficult to modify, such as previous episodes of violence, past abusive conduct, exposure to violent relational models, or criminal records. Dynamic factors, by contrast, concern current circumstances that may evolve over time, including substance abuse, employment instability, family conflict, relationship breakdown, social isolation, psychological vulnerability, or failure to engage in treatment programmes. The distinction is crucial not only for evaluating current levels of danger but also for designing targeted, proportionate, and measurable interventions.

However, an assessment focused exclusively on perpetrator-related risk factors cannot be considered sufficient. Equal attention must be given to victim vulnerability factors, including economic, social, cultural, psychological, and family circumstances; the presence of dependent children; isolation from family or social support networks; emotional or financial dependence upon the abusive partner; lack of legal information; and limited personal resources. All these elements may significantly increase the likelihood that the victim will experience further abuse or be unable to leave the abusive relationship in a timely manner.

Implications for Civil and Family Proceedings

Risk assessment is not relevant solely within criminal proceedings; it also has decisive implications in civil and family law matters, particularly in cases involving separation, divorce, child custody arrangements, visitation rights, and parental responsibility. In such contexts, violent conduct cannot be reduced to mere couple conflict, nor neutralized through abstract notions of shared parenting without adequate case-specific evaluation.

In many situations, separation does not mark the end of violence but rather the moment in which violence intensifies. The dissolution of an emotional or cohabiting relationship may trigger a genuine escalation of control, threats, stalking, or retaliation, particularly when the perpetrator is unwilling to accept the loss of dominance over the victim. Consequently, visitation arrangements, child custody decisions, supervised contact orders, and the suspension or termination of parental responsibility must be assessed with particular rigor, taking into account the safety of both the woman and the children, as well as the perpetrator’s actual parental capacity.

Furthermore, exposure to domestic violence cannot be dismissed as a secondary phenomenon or a mere by-product of family conflict. Children who witness violence suffer direct harm, even when they are not themselves the targets of physical aggression. As a result, the protection of women and children should never be treated as competing interests but rather as elements of a unified protective framework grounded in harm prevention, the protection of vulnerable individuals, and the paramount best interests of the child.

The Treatment of Offenders: Between Prevention and Accountability

Efforts to prevent and combat gender-based violence must also address the treatment of offenders. Article 17 of Italian Law No. 69 of 19 July 2019, commonly known as the “Red Code” (Codice Rosso), amended Article 13-bis of Law No. 354 of 26 July 1975 concerning psychological treatment programmes for individuals convicted of sexual offences, domestic abuse, stalking, and other violent crimes. The legislation established a framework in which punitive responses must be balanced with the need to prevent recidivism and address abusive relational patterns.

The central issue is understanding under what conditions such programmes may be genuinely effective rather than merely symbolic. It is not sufficient to formally provide treatment programmes unless there is also clarity regarding the professionals responsible for delivering them, the required expertise, intervention protocols, evaluation methods, available resources, and coordination among judicial authorities, social services, healthcare systems, specialized centres, local institutions, and anti-violence networks.

Offender treatment must never become an excuse or a means of improperly reducing personal responsibility. Rather, it should constitute a serious, monitored, professionally qualified process aimed at increasing awareness of the harm caused, dismantling patterns of domination, managing aggressive behaviour, and preventing recidivism. At the same time, the protection of victims must never be made contingent upon the outcome of the perpetrator’s treatment programme.

Particular attention must also be paid to the intergenerational transmission of violence. Individuals who experienced violence during childhood may, in the absence of appropriate interventions, reproduce relational patterns based on control, aggression, domination, or the normalization of abuse during adulthood. Consequently, preventing child maltreatment and addressing dysfunctional family dynamics must be regarded as essential components of broader strategies to combat gender-based violence.

The Need to Respond to Violence

Every form of violence must be recognized and addressed from its very first manifestation. No act of domination, threat, humiliation, control, aggression, or restriction of personal freedom can be considered acceptable within an intimate, family, or cohabiting relationship. Emotional bonds can never be invoked as a justification for abuse, nor as a reason to delay the activation of protective measures.

Responding to physical, psychological, and economic violence is often extremely difficult, particularly when emotional attachment, financial dependence, the presence of minor children, fear of retaliation, or the perception of lacking a support network are involved. Nevertheless, recognizing the violence suffered and seeking help constitute essential steps toward restoring dignity, safety, autonomy, and personal freedom.

In situations of risk, victims should avoid disclosing their plans to leave to the abusive partner, identify a safe location in advance, prepare essential documents, money, and personal belongings, seek assistance from competent authorities, contact legal professionals, psychologists, or anti-violence centres, and make use of institutional protection mechanisms, including Italy’s national anti-violence and anti-stalking helpline (1522). In cases of immediate danger, emergency services should be contacted without delay.

Economic Abuse as a Hidden Form of Abuse

Among the various manifestations of gender-based violence, economic abuse represents one of the least visible and most insidious forms. Unlike physical violence, it does not necessarily leave visible marks on the victim’s body, yet it profoundly affects personal freedom, self-determination, and the practical ability to escape an abusive relationship. By creating material dependency, economic abuse makes reporting violence, leaving the relationship, and rebuilding an independent life significantly more difficult.

Economic abuse occurs when a partner limits, controls, or prevents access to financial resources, employment opportunities, education, bank accounts, personal property, or family assets. It may take forms that appear ordinary, socially tolerated, or even normalized, while producing a fundamentally coercive effect by rendering the victim dependent, vulnerable to manipulation, isolated, and deprived of meaningful alternatives.

In many contexts, economic domination is so deeply embedded that it is not immediately recognized as abuse. It may be mistaken for traditional family management, delegation of financial responsibilities to a partner, or an apparently agreed division of roles. Yet denying a person the ability to work, manage their own money, access a bank account, understand the family’s financial situation, or participate in financial decision-making constitutes a form of control incompatible with the principles of dignity, substantive equality, and parity within family relationships.

The Main Forms of Economic Abuse

Economic abuse can generally be classified into three principal forms, which frequently overlap and share the common objective of limiting the victim’s autonomy while consolidating the perpetrator’s power within the relationship.

The first form is economic control, which occurs when the perpetrator limits or prevents the victim’s use of financial resources. This may involve denying access to bank accounts, requiring permission for every expenditure, monitoring purchases, withholding payment cards, identification documents, salaries, or financial instruments, or imposing unilateral management of family finances incompatible with the principle of equal dignity within the relationship.

The second form is economic exploitation, consisting of the use of the victim’s resources for the benefit of the perpetrator. Examples include the misappropriation of money, the seizure of property, the imposition of debt, the unauthorized use of bank accounts or payment cards, compelling the victim to work while denying access to earned income, or any other conduct that transforms the victim’s earning capacity or assets into a source of advantage for the abusive partner.

The third form is economic sabotage, which occurs when the abusive partner prevents the victim from seeking, obtaining, or maintaining employment, obstructs educational opportunities, creates conflicts in the workplace, restricts mobility, undermines professional autonomy, or deliberately reduces opportunities for economic independence. Such conduct affects not only immediate access to resources but also the victim’s future ability to establish an autonomous existence.

These behaviours cannot be dismissed as secondary aspects of an abusive relationship. They constitute genuine instruments of domination capable of affecting time, space, social relationships, personal choices, and individual freedom. Within this logic, control over money becomes control over the person.

Economic Autonomy and Financial Education

The absence of economic autonomy represents one of the principal vulnerability factors within abusive relationships. A woman who lacks independent income, savings, financial literacy, or autonomous access to economic resources faces greater difficulties in reporting abuse, leaving the relationship, paying legal expenses, securing alternative housing, protecting her children, and rebuilding an independent material and psychological existence.

For this reason, financial education should be considered an integral component of gender-based violence prevention. It should not be viewed merely as the acquisition of technical knowledge concerning money management, but rather as a tool of legal, social, and personal empowerment. Understanding how a bank account operates, appreciating the value of one’s own work, reading contracts, managing income, accessing credit, and planning expenditures and savings all strengthen an individual’s capacity for self-determination and resistance to dependency.

Domestic and caregiving work must also be recognized in its economic and social value. The fact that a woman primarily performs unpaid work within the home cannot justify her exclusion from the co-management of family resources, nor legitimize an unequal distribution of economic power based upon the invisibility of her contribution. It is essential to prevent the family from becoming a setting in which unpaid labour serves as a basis for subordination.

A Legislative Gap to Be Addressed

Economic abuse is still too frequently subsumed within the broader category of domestic violence without receiving full autonomous recognition. Both legal scholarship and case law continue to encounter difficulties in developing a stable and operational definition, despite abundant evidence demonstrating that economic abuse constitutes a specific, recurrent, and structurally significant component of abusive relationships.

The absence of explicit legal recognition risks leaving many harmful behaviours insufficiently protected. Although such conduct may not immediately translate into physical violence, it can profoundly undermine the victim’s freedom. Economic control cannot be dismissed as a private matter or a mere dysfunction within a relationship; rather, it must be recognized as a form of domination capable of compromising personal independence, dignity, and self-determination.

It is therefore necessary to strengthen the legislative and institutional framework by recognizing economic abuse as an autonomous form of gender-based violence, including within marriage and cohabiting relationships. Such recognition should be accompanied by preventive measures, victim protection mechanisms, professional training, economic support for survivors, facilitated access to legal assistance, financial education initiatives, and effective safeguards within both civil and criminal proceedings.

Contribution to the European Debate

From this perspective, the author, acting in her capacity as consultant to the European Scientific Commission, European legal expert, and lawyer specialized in family and juvenile law in both civil and criminal matters, submitted a contribution to the public consultation on the European Union Gender Equality Action Plan. The purpose of this contribution was to draw attention to the need to recognize economic abuse as an autonomous form of gender-based violence and to promote a clearer legal classification of this phenomenon.

The objective is to encourage reflection on the possible recognition of economic abuse as a distinct legal offence within the legal systems of partner countries, taking into account that unequal access to resources, gender-insensitive economic systems, structural causes of inequality, and financial dependency within intimate relationships remain issues insufficiently addressed by public policies and existing legal frameworks.

Granting explicit recognition to economic abuse means making legally visible what often remains confined to domestic invisibility. It means naming what many victims experience without being able to define it, identifying as abuse what is too frequently normalized as family management, and creating protection mechanisms better suited to the complexity of violent relationships, in which the deprivation of economic autonomy becomes a silent yet profound restriction of personal freedom.