FINANCIAL LITERACY AGAINST ECONOMIC VIOLENCE
One of the founding purposes that distinguishes our Foundation from others that deal with financial education in Italy, clarifies exactly the uniqueness of the model that has characterized Global Thinking Foundation since its birth, in the development of targeted and coherent projects: “Prevent and fight the situations resulting from economic isolation for women victims of economic violence, implementing training and dissemination actions to support the principles of gender equality and reduction of the social damage deriving from this phenomenon, which also exposes the new generations to a lack of active participation in the economic development of the country“.
Our Economic Violence Prevention Manual compiles the results of our ‘Donne al quadrato‘ project. Years of experience on the subject are gathered in our continuously updated ‘Economic Violence Prevention Manual,’ which analyzes the social impact of courses and counseling sessions conducted nationwide.
A special acknowledgment goes to the extraordinary “Donne al quadrato” Task Force: trainers, financial educators, and professionals who divide their time between courses and providing assistance at counseling centers.
Gender Violence starts with Economic Violence
Ed. 2022 by Global Thinking Foundation
W7 Position Paper 2024
EIGE Understanding Economic Violence against Women
The closeness with other European realities in which Governments have courageously implemented existing laws, as we describe in the Appendix dedicated to Great Britain, or strengthened widespread family policies as in France, Spain and Portugal, fill us with hope and strengthen our commitment because even in Italy we can fully understand the phenomenon of economic violence in its economic and social gravity. When we talk about relationship violence and abuse, we typically focus on physical and emotional abuse. But financial abuse or control of one’s ability to acquire, use and keep money by an intimate partner occurs in up to 99% of domestic violence cases.
(From the preface by Claudia Segre)
Economic violence is one of the expressions of abuse against women that is still widespread and yet underestimated today:
The Economic Violence Prevention Manual aims to inform women both about their rights in the economic sphere and about the points of attention to recognize economic violence and eliminate it from their lives, revealing those behaviors, sometimes socially accepted, harmful to dignity and autonomy of women.
The convention of violence and harassment
The economic violence that this guide addresses is one of the most subtle and heinous forms of violence against women which the Istanbul Convention defines as: “violation of human rights and form of discrimination against women including all gender-based acts of violence that cause or are likely to cause harm or suffering of a physical, sexual, psychological or economic nature, including threats to carry out such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether in public or private life“.
Added to this is a new Convention, accompanied by a Recommendation, to combat violence and harassment in the world of work which were adopted by the International Labor Conference (ILC). The Violence and Harassment Convention, 2019 was adopted on 21 June by delegates of the ILO Centenary International Labor Conference.
The Convention recognizes that violence and harassment in the world of work “may constitute a violation or abuse of human rights (…) is a threat to equal opportunities, is unacceptable and incompatible with decent work”. The new international treaty defines “violence and harassment” as a set of behaviors, practices or threats “that aim to cause — or are likely to cause — physical, psychological, sexual or economic harm.” It requires Member States to work to ensure “zero tolerance in the world of work”.
