Opinion | In India, how Covid-19 enabled new forms of economic abuse of women
- The pandemic gave abusive men new ways of controlling and abusing their wives’ finances, such as misusing their bank accounts and withholding household payments
- Indian law recognises economic abuse, but official understanding of economic abuse and its impact on women remains extremely low
Economic abuse tends to involve controlling and coercive behaviour by a woman’s partner and sometimes their in-laws or other family members, threatening her economic security and potential for self-sufficiency. While economic abuse can take many forms, there are three main types: sabotage, restriction and exploitation.
Sabotage usually involves interfering in a woman’s access to money or in their work. Restriction is about controlling how women use money. And exploitation most often means a male partner or relative living off a woman, or insisting all debts go in her name.
My previous research has revealed unique forms of abuse that are embedded in specific sociocultural practices in India. For example, exploitation of streedhan (jewellery and movable or immovable assets given to a woman before and during her marriage) and dowry practices (money and gifts demanded by the groom and in-laws at the time of and after marriage) have been identified as a common form of economic abuse in South Asian marriages. If a woman lives with her husband’s family, they may control her assets or income where multiple generations live together.
Economic abuse has a huge impact on women’s physical and mental well-being
As part of our research in a city in Bihar, India’s third-most populous state in the east of the country, we made a 20-minute documentary, Spent: Fighting Economic Abuse in India, featuring five of the 76 women we spoke to. All but two were mothers with dependent children. We found that economic abuse was common irrespective of class, caste, religion, education or employment status.
