Women Victims of Economic Violence: An Analysis of the Associative Sector Through Santa Marta Women's Association, Manabí, Ecuador

Introduction

More than four decades ago, various organizations (The L'Occitane Foundation, William and Flora Hewlett, Zonta International, among others) undertook the fight to eradicate violence against women at a global level. Violence is considered an action that, per se, violates the rights of women, affecting their integrity by causing physical, psychological or emotional damage. The phenomenon is present in all societies, globally and without distinction. According to the United Nations (UN, 2021), one in three women worldwide experiences physical or sexual violence from a very young age. This amounts to 736 million women who have suffered some form of abuse at the hands of a partner or other aggressor while one in four young people between 15 and 24 years of age who have had an intimate relationship will have suffered some type of violence by the age of 25. The World Health Organization (WHO, 2005, p. 6), in a study of more than 24,000 women carried out in ten countries, concluded that “the percentages of women who had been victims of violence at the hands of their partner ranged from 4% in Japan, Serbia and Montenegro to 54% in Ethiopia”.

In addition to these commonly reported processes of violence, other types, such as economic violence, are recognized by the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women, 2021). Economic violence is defined as “persistence in achieving or attempting to achieve financial dependence on another person, maintaining total control over their financial resources, preventing them from accessing them and prohibiting them from working or attending school.” In the same vein, it is worth highlighting a study carried out by UN Women and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), in which an analysis of more than 2500 government provisions were made across 206 countries and territories. The study looked at three areas with a gender focus: the fight against gender violence, supporting unpaid care and strengthening women's economic security (UN, 2020). It emerged that the Americas has more policies dedicated to strengthening women's economic security than anywhere else. Forty-seven countries in the region have implemented specific policies of this type and 77% of these include the gender aspect. Of the 634 actions adopted, 281 address gender issues, 190 violence, 65 economic security and 26 focus on unpaid care (UN, 2020). In Latin America, economic violence is conceived as a serious problem that affects all of society and that has caused a deterioration in the economic resources and, therefore, autonomy of women. Aggressions seek to limit or prevent all types of women’s income in order to exercise control over them and instigate a condition of dependence on partners or families. It is worth emphasizing that there is a wide gap between the objective of gender equity and the current economic autonomy of women. Despite the opportunities arising from advances in information technology and the processes of globalization, economic violence continues to affect many women because the time spent in unpaid work is frequently longer than that of men. According to the Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLAC, 2021a), “In the region, on average every day women spend three times as much time on unpaid domestic and care work compared to men's time.” Table 1, Indicators in Latin America, illustrates this wide difference in unpaid work between men and women. The proportion of women who spend time on unpaid work with no income is greater than those who have some income. Even those in paid employment spend more time on domestic work than men and have to perform domestic tasks while making even more effort to be part of the workplace; in fact, “this overload of women's working hours … [should be seen] as a barrier to participation in the labor market on equal terms with men and access to economic resources that allow them greater degrees of autonomy” (ECLAC, 2021bc).