ROME — “‘Stay home,’ he said, ‘take care of the children, I’ll take care of the rest.’ I agreed to make it work, I didn’t think it would become my cage,” remembers Giusy Arricchiello, 44. She was 22 years old when she married the man who would be her husband for nearly two decades. Their union was marked by an unwritten pact: she would stop working to devote herself to her family, and he would provide economic security.
The plans, however, did not include the abuse she suffered in silence for years because she had nowhere to run. “He turned out to be violent right away, but I was young. And the first few shoves I didn’t mind,” she says. “Then when the pushing turned to beating, it was already too late. I had two small children, no home and no job. Where could I go? On the street, under a bridge?”
Arricchiello’s is not an isolated case. There are many women in Italy who, in addition to physical and psychological violence, also suffer economic violence — defined by the UN as “when an individual denies his intimate partner access to financial resources, typically as a form of abuse or control or in order to isolate her or to impose other adverse consequences to her well-being.”
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These women are double victims of partners who use every means of overpowering and prevaricating, even money. The blackmail of lack of livelihood thus becomes a weapon in the hands of abusive men.
In this context, the UN is rallying behind the call to “Invest in Women: Accelerate Progress,” as the theme of this year’s International Women’s Day, March 8. The idea of educating women about money and finance can work several ways: for women, it means they can stand for themselves without fearing the unknown; for the world, it means “turbocharging a future where everyone in society can thrive, creating a world of boundless opportunity and empowerment for all,” UN Women writes on its website.
According to a recent Ipsos survey for the Italian NGO WeWorld, the economic violence is more widespread than some may think: nearly half (49%) of the women surveyed said they had experienced economic violence at least once in their lives.
That figure rises to 67% in the case of divorced or separated women. In the latter case, at least one in four women tells of having had to submit to financial decisions made by her partner, without having been consulted beforehand.
“Economic violence has precise roots in male-centric and patriarchal sociocultural systems that nurture power asymmetries,” said Martina Albini, coordinator of WeWorld’s study center. “And it affects more people who suffer cumulative forms of discrimination: women who are very old or very young, with disabilities or from migrant backgrounds.”
I was not free…
The recorded cases are many and varied, ranging from outright economic deprivation to the husband’s accumulation of debt in his wife’s name to job sabotage. First, women are asked to stop working, then strategies are put in place to make keeping employment and an independent resource impossible. Finally, it leads to financial control, which also becomes a way of restricting every aspect of female partners’ lives.
The house she owned was not hers, nor was the money that allowed her and her children to have a decent life.
“I wasn’t free to spend the money even for groceries,” Arricchiello said, “My ex-husband had given me his ATM card, so with every purchase or withdrawal, he immediately received a notification on his phone. He always knew where I was. As soon as I bought something somewhere a little farther from home, he would start a video call and interrogate me. He was a truck driver, and when he was away from home his jealousy became an obsession. At the end of the discussion he would block the ATM, and I couldn’t even finish my dinner errands.”
To this day, Arricchiello speaks of these episodes as a nightmare. For years, she believed she would never be free of the violent and oppressive relationship. “My family did not support me: my father told me that I had made the choice and should stick with it; my mother did not have the financial means to help me,” she said.
So as the incidents of violence multiplied and the outbursts and beatings occurred closer and closer together, Arricchiello kept telling herself she had no choice: the house she owned was not hers, nor was the money that allowed her and her children to have a decent life.
…then one day I decided that I wanted to be
“Then one day, after yet another violent argument, I decided to call the police. Once the officers arrived, I told them to find me a place to stay, because I could not leave the house with two small children without a penny and a roof over my head,” she remembers.
Social services intervened, and Arricchiello was transferred to a shelter linked to an anti-violence center run by the Eva cooperative. There, she was able to regain control of her life, attend job placement courses and find employment at the snack bar of the Mercadante theater in Naples, run by the same cooperative.
Limiting autonomy and economic independence are ways of exercising complete power over a woman.
“It’s a job I love because it allows me to be around people,” she said, “The path out of violence was difficult, I felt like a failure for a 20-year story that hurt not only me but also my two beautiful boys. If it weren’t for the anti-violence center, I would never have made it. It’s easy to tell women to report violence. But then who helps you? Where do you go? If I had an alternative, I would have ended my toxic relationship years ago.”
The economic aspect of gender-based violence is still the most underestimated, said Lella Palladino, sociologist and founder of the Eva cooperative, “And yet its impact is dramatic: limiting autonomy and economic independence — by preventing a partner from working, controlling the salary and then skimming money for groceries, never giving her more than a few euros — are ways of exercising complete power over a woman.”
