Canada’s first ever women’s economic abuse and injustice summit urges financial institutions to do more to help survivors

Content warning: This story mentions domestic abuse. 

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“For many men, for many perpetrators, it’s a strategy. And then of course, it’s control. For a woman, it’s very hard to prove. But once you leave, you will be in bankruptcy.”

Easy to hide and difficult to recover from — Meseret Haileyesus is talking about the harsh reality of domestic economic abuse. 

As the founder of the Canadian Center for Women’s Empowerment (CCFWE) and a survivor of economic abuse herself, Haileyesus knows how taxing it is to endure and finally leave a financially abusive relationship.

And she is not alone. According to CCFWE, 93 per cent of women had their abusers withhold money they needed for food, clothes, and other necessities during the pandemic. 

On the heels of sharing their policy recommendation with the Standing Committee on the Status of Women at the House of Commons in March and consulting on the National Action Plan on Violence Against Women and Gender-Based Violence, CCFWE created enough momentum to launch its first Domestic Economic Violence and Injustice Summit. 

On Nov. 15, over 350 people gathered virtually to learn how to address this pervasive injustice, one week ahead of the second Economic Abuse Awareness Day on Nov. 26. The summit is part of CCFWE’s National Economic Abuse Awareness and Advocacy System Change Campaign, #HelpUsRise2022. Panels ranged from sharing Canadian research on domestic economic abuse to international agencies leading responses to economic abuse. A key panel and recurring hope for economic abuse prevention was how financial institutions can prepare and respond to needs of survivors of economic abuse. 

But what is economic abuse?

Economic abuse appears in several forms – a domestic partner might deny someone access to bank accounts, limit their decisions about family finances, or restrict purchases of essentials like food and transportation. They might even stop their partner from getting a job, advocating for a raise, or otherwise improving their economic status.

During the pandemic, many people were thrown into economic turmoil. But with women being unemployed at higher rates and gender-based violence rising during lockdown, around 80 per cent of economic abuse survivors said their abusers were more controlling, manipulative, and coercive with their finances. 

Haileyesus says that according to their research, financial institutions are not helpful for survivors of gender-based violence. In some cases, banks provided the survivors’ addresses on file to the survivors’ abusers due to their domestic relationship. 

She says many survivors of abuse preferred to keep their money under the mattress than in their own bank account.

CCFWE collaborates with and amplifies the efforts of more than 125 organizations and grassroots groups trying to end economic abuse across Canada. Some CCFWE commitments include group counselling and individual therapy, research to develop policy papers and influence government, and  entrepreneurship programs for survivors, direct financial support for survivors, and an entrepreneurship program. 

Haileyesus says it is difficult for survivors to have courage and build their credit because banks have worn them down. 

“Who’s going to give you a credit card? Most of these women’s credit is destroyed. They’re going through bankruptcy. It’s very hard to build [credit],” says Haileyesus. 

CCFWE’s systemic solutions to economic abuse

Two years ago CCFWE established its National Task Force for Women’s Economic Justice to develop policy position papers, research, recommendations, and best practices to influence the government. Last summer they published a policy recommendation report for banks, credit unions, and financial institutions to address economic abuse. 

“Let’s fix the system first, so that women can decide, they can leave, they can hope,” says Haileyesus. 

The events’ 350 attendees were made up of local and federal government workers, consumer lawyers, various financial institutions, credit collectors, social workers, frontline workers, private stakeholders and economic abuse survivors. 

Haileyesus says a conference like this involves so many stakeholders because economic abuse is a systemic issue. It needs systemic solutions. 

“We need to have a system that allows you to have housing, a system that allows you to access mental health services, the justice system, the banking system. The system has failed,” says Haileyesus. “Women need sustainable and inclusive economic empowerment.”

One of CCFWE’s focuses is partnering with Canadian banks. They are trying to execute practices with the Canadian Bankers Association to understand and incorporate survivors’ needs into their services. CCFWE is working on an economic abuse education tool to help bank employees, houseless shelter staff, and lawyers identify if anyone they serve is being economically abused. 

“If you are homeless or if you stay in a shelter, it’s very hard to get bank accounts because a bank will ask your permanent residence to have a new bank account. It’s just a simple barrier,” says Haileyesus. 

The Canadian Bankers Association did not respond to requests for comment in time for publication. 

But abuse isn’t just perpetrators refusing to give money to the survivor. Sometimes the survivor is forced to be the sole provider. CCFWE reports that 92 per cent of survivors’ abusers refused to get a job so they must rely on the person they are abusing for financial support.

“We need to have programs and policies that enable women to thrive and then survive so they can build,” says Haileyesus. 

When social impact meets fintech

Molly Willat, the head of programs for financial health at Fintech Cadence sits on the national taskforce. Fintech Cadence is a non-profit that supports early-stage fintech (financial technology) startups to scale their business and collaborates with financial institutions to help solve industry challenges. 

“Banks are increasingly using different kinds of fintech throughout the customer experience,” says Willat. “Because of that, I think that it’s imperative upon fintech as an industry to make sure it understands economic abuse when you’re working with people’s money, to recognize the flags that might indicate that somebody is experiencing economic abuse so that you’re not contributing to or allowing that to happen.”

For example, UK’s Monzo is an online bank that trains staff to recognize signs of economic abuse and learn how to support customers who experience it. Their app has an untraceable chat feature that deletes messages once a conversation is closed, so people can communicate if they are being economically abused. 

Willat says Fintech Cadence is looking to support startups in Canada that are specifically designed to serve low income and underserved communities that don’t have their needs met through traditional financial services. 

“I see my job as making sure that the founders who we work with get exposed to knowledge and conversations about issues like economic abuse,” says Willat. “We have a lot of focus on impact measurement and part of that is looking for unintended negative impacts that you might have through the design of your product.”

Willat says economic abuse may not be relevant for all founders’ startups, like tax management softwares, but it gives other startups something to think about, such as those building platforms for emergency savings. 

“That can really be a powerful tool for someone who is in a situation of economic abuse, because it might be the thing that allows them to build enough of a savings butter to get out of the house safely and not go back,” says Willat.

Willat says she tries to introduce startups to organizations working with different financially vulnerable groups, like new immigrants and LGBTQ2+ communities, so they can help serve them better.

“I think that if we get knowledge and get the founders into those conversations, at least when they are at the point where they’re really building out their product roadmap they can be like, ‘I know that this is something I have to think about. I care about this and this is something I want to make sure that I’m building into my product design,’” says Willat.

Willat says that from the work she’s seen from the task force, banks are making an effort, but more needs to be done. 

“The efforts of banks are really siloed,” says Willat. “You’ll have one part of the bank really pushing for a change to be made, but getting that adopted across the whole institution is very difficult.”

This is why Willat says it’s important to educate and support startups outside of “big, incumbent institutions” like corporate banks, where it’s harder to change the way things are done. 

Turning discussion into action

Haileyesus says a crucial step to achieving this economic empowerment for women is knowing exactly who is in need. One #HelpUsRise2022 call to action urges the federal government to allocate more funding for more research and race-based data. “We need to see how many Black, Indigenous, and gender diverse communities are impacted by this.”

Haileyesus says hearing so many women share their stories of abuse during the summit was heartbreaking. 

“We need to have programs and policies that enable women to thrive and then survive so they can build.”

Ultimately, for Haileyesus, fighting economic abuse spans all sectors: “Private stakeholders have to be part of this work. It’s not just the government. It’s not just social service work. Everybody has to be part of this movement. That’s our recommendation.”

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