Last week the Home Office announced a strategy to end violence against women and girls. Preventing violence in relationships will be included in personal, social, health and economic (PSHE) education. The idea is to address attitudes which condone and perpetuate violence against women before they become entrenched in young people.
There are also plans for a national communications strategy, skilling teachers, and a health task force.
What’s it got to do with financial education?
A lot more than most people think.
Financial abuse is one of the common forms of domestic violence. A resource for health professionals produced by the NHS describes it like this:
Economic or financial abuse aims to limit a victim’s ability to access help. Tactics may include controlling the finances; withholding money or credit cards; making someone unreasonably account for money spent/petrol used; exploiting assets; withholding basic necessities; preventing someone from working; deliberately running up debts; forcing someone to work against their will and sabotaging someone’s job.
The guide describes how many abusers behave in ways that include more than one type of domestic violence. The boundaries between different types of domestic abuse, including emotional, psychological, physical, sexual, and financial abuse, are often blurred.
Financial abuse is disturbingly common. When the YWCA surveyed disadvantaged young women in its centres it found that a third of them had experienced some form of financial abuse – such as having money taken from them or being manipulated with money to control or harm them. A very large proportion of young women said their male partners spent money earmarked for essentials on themselves.
Equipping young women with the skills and confidence to recognise financial abuse for what it is, and explore ways not to endure it, is a fine objective. So is letting young men know the effect of their actions, and how financial abuse is linked to, and as unacceptable as, other forms of relationship violence.
The YWCA is one of the few groups raising awareness of the problem nationally. See its excellent description of the problem in a free downloadable information sheet. In the young women’s stories section, Kelly and Kim talk about their direct experience of financial abuse.
Last week the Home Office announced a strategy to end violence against women and girls. Preventing violence in relationships will be included in personal, social, health and economic (PSHE) education. The idea is to address attitudes which condone and perpetuate violence against women before they become entrenched in young people.
There are also plans for a national communications strategy, skilling teachers, and a health task force.
What’s it got to do with financial education?
A lot more than most people think.
Financial abuse is one of the common forms of domestic violence. A resource for health professionals produced by the NHS describes it like this:
Economic or financial abuse aims to limit a victim’s ability to access help. Tactics may include controlling the finances; withholding money or credit cards; making someone unreasonably account for money spent/petrol used; exploiting assets; withholding basic necessities; preventing someone from working; deliberately running up debts; forcing someone to work against their will and sabotaging someone’s job.
The guide describes how many abusers behave in ways that include more than one type of domestic violence. The boundaries between different types of domestic abuse, including emotional, psychological, physical, sexual, and financial abuse, are often blurred.
When the YWCA surveyed disadvantaged young women in its centres it found that a third of them had experienced some form of financial abuse — such as having money taken from them, or being manipulated with money to control or harm them. A very large proportion of young women said their male partners spent money earmarked for essentials on themselves.
Equipping young women with the skills and confidence to recognise financial abuse for what it is, and explore ways not to endure it, is a fine objective. So is letting young men know the effects of their actions, and how financial abuse is linked to, and as unacceptable as, other forms of relationship violence.
The YWCA is one of the few groups raising awareness of the problem nationally. See its excellent description of the problem in a free downloadable information sheet. In the young women’s stories section, Kelly and Kim talk about their direct experience of financial abuse.
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