Financial consequences of leaving violent men – women survivors of domestic violence and the social assistance system in Sweden

ABSTRACT

Being self-sufficient, having an economy of your own, does not only safeguard basic resources such as food and shelter but is also a prerequisite for ensuring full participation in society. Research shows that women subjected to domestic violence often suffer from economic abuse and experience economic hardship within and after their relationships. Without economic support it is harder for abused women to break up and the risk of returning to a violent partner increases. The aim of the article is to understand how survivors of domestic violence experience financial vulnerability and what implications these experiences have on social work within the social assistance system. Based on 13 in-depth interviews with women survivors, our study describes how debts and stolen money, together with difficulties on the labour market, affect their ability to have a reasonable economic standard (long) after breaking up. Several of the women describe how social workers in different ways have recognized them by giving emotional support, cognitive respect and social esteem. However, social workers have also mimicked patterns of abuse from their ex-partners.

ABSTRAKT

Att kunna försörja sig själv och kunna kontrollera sin egen ekonomi garanterar inte bara tillgång till det mest basala som mat och husrum utan är också en förutsättning för att fullt ut kunna vara delaktig i samhället. Den tidigare forskningen visar att kvinnor som utsatts för våld i nära relationer också ofta utsätts för ekonomiskt våld där ekonomin har använts för att kontrollera och skada. Forskningen har också visat att en fungerande ekonomi underlättar uppbrottet ur våldsamma relationer. I projektet har 13 intervjuer med våldsutsatta kvinnor genomförts. Resultatet visar att ekonomin under lång tid hämnar de våldsutsatta kvinnornas möjligheter att leva ett fullständigt liv. Skulder och dålig position på arbetsmarknaden som ett resultat av våld påverkar under lång tid efter uppbrottet. Socialbidragssystemet kan dock motverka och stödja kvinnorna och därigenom minska risken att de går tillbaka till våldsamma partners. Vissa kvinnor får också detta stöd. Samtidigt finns också många beskrivningar när socialbidragssystemet blir en del av problemet med socialarbetare som gör rigida regeltolkningar och även I några fall kränker kvinnorna på liknande sätt som deras tidigare partners.

KEYWORDS:

• Domestic violence
• social assistance
• economic abuse
• recognition

NYCKELORD:

• våld i nära relationer
• erkännande
• socialbidrag
• ekonomiskt bistånd
• ekonomiskt våld
• brottsoffer
• försörjning

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Rickard Ulmestig is a senior lecture in Social Work at Linnaeus University in Sothern Sweden. Ulmestig’s main research interest is in policy change and organizational change within the welfare state. He have published several studies within labour market policy, social assistance and the specific welfare policy in the Nordic countries. Ulmestig have, together with Ivan Harslöf, edited a book on New Social Risk in the Nordic Welfare States that are published by Palgrave titled ‘Changing risks and policy adaptions in the Nordic Welfare states’. He has lately started to study financial aspects on domestic violence and how these aspects are handled by survivors of domestic violence and by the welfare state.

Marie Eriksson is a senior lecture in Social Work at Linnaeus University, Sweden. Eriksson is a Ph.D. in history and her thesis is about marital discord and men’s violence against women in nineteenth-century Sweden. Her main research interest revolves around gender and violence. At the moment, she is involved in a research project studying different forms of women's violence in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century Sweden. Parallel to her research in history, Eriksson is doing research on financial abuse in the context of men's violence against women.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by The Swedish Crime Victim Compensation and Support Authority under [grant number 47210012].