Introduction

Economic abuse (EA) comprises a “harrowing constellation of abusive behaviors” (Bullock et al., 2020, p. 841) which researchers have described as “among the most powerful methods abusers have to keep a survivor in a relationship and to diminish their ability to safely leave” (PenzeyMoog & Slakoff, 2021, p. 645). After leaving abusing relationships, women experience higher rates of poverty, which may be exacerbated by an ex-partner’s interference with their employment or ongoing financial coercion and control (Fahmy & Williamson, 2018; Kaittila et al., 2022; Postmus et al., 2016). Victim-survivors of EA often experience lifelong impacts that can increase their likelihood of living in poverty and limit their access to meaningful employment and adequate housing.

While research on women’s experiences of EA is growing, there is a paucity of evidence on what interventions exist to prevent would-be perpetrators’ economic abuse, or to assist victim survivors to recover from abuse both during and following abusive intimate partner relationships. In this article, we analyse empirical studies that report on interventions to address EA, often as part of efforts to intervene in IPV more broadly. We do so in order to develop a robust account of the strengths, weaknesses, gaps and omissions that exist within published EA prevention, intervention, and crisis-management responses. As such, this qualitative meta-synthesis provides a first step towards developing an evidence base to inform future interventions and identify future priority areas.

To draw together and critique the diverse range of IPV interventions that exist internationally to address EA, we apply Carol Bacchi’s (2009) problem framing logic. We do so in order to critique the causal and conceptual logics that underpin program activities, examine unspoken or taken-for-granted assumptions, and identify opportunities to advance upon existing interventions to better prevent or minimize harm.

In line with the gendered prevalence of EA, and the gendered nature of much of the research on this issue, for the remainder of this article, we refer to victim-survivors of EA in intimate partner relationships as women and perpetrators as men. This nomenclature is used to simplify terminology and reflect the reported gender of the participants in the intervention studies reviewed. The intention is not to discount the experiences of male or non-binary victim-survivors or suggest that women cannot perpetrate EA, but to represent the cohorts of participants in the included studies.

Background

Economic abuse is a form of IPV that has received growing attention, with recent studies highlighting its use as a mechanism of abusive, or coercive, control (Bullock et al., 2020; Johnson et al., 2022a, b; Kaittila et al., 2022; Keatley et al., 2021; Kanougiya et al., 2021; Kutin et al., 2019; Postmus et al., 2016). Recently, Hing and colleagues (2022) examined men’s motivations to commit economic abuse, including the desire to control family resources, maintain power, and control their intimate partner – most often a woman. Misogyny and gendered expectations regarding women’s domestic role were identified as some of EA’s key drivers (Hing et al., 2022).

Research has identified patterns of EA that exist across three domains: economic exploitation, economic control, and employment sabotage; however, these categories are porous and by no means mutually exclusive (Johnson et al., 2022a, b). Economic exploitation may involve such tactics as the fraudulent use of bank accounts or extending the family mortgage without the woman’s knowledge (Hing et al., 2022). Similarly, Bullock and colleagues (2020) identified EA enacted through financial or other payment systems, often termed ‘financial abuse’ (Author), as occurring through such exploitative behaviours as damaging women’s credit rating, defaulting on car loans, or moving out of the family home and suddenly not paying rent or mortgage.

Economic control, on the other hand, involves perpetrators restricting access to money, such as by controlling bill payments, refusing to buy women period products, and spending money on themselves rather than providing household resources (Bhandari & Sabri, 2020; Fahmy & Williamson, 2018; Hing et al., 2022). Finally, employment sabotage involves such tactics as sabotaging women’s employment, preventing intimate partners from working, work restriction, harassment or stalking at a(n ex-) partner’s workplace, or sabotaging training or education (Johnson et al., 2022a, b). Johnson and colleague’s (2022) identify three forms of EA, that map onto Kaittila and colleague’s (2022) four forms of post-separation EA, which include economic sabotage, withholding resources, financial harassment, and stealing as common tactics. Kaittila and colleagues also note that, post-separation, acts of EA may expand to entail financial bullying and harassment to exert control. Post-separation, EA can become more insidious and difficult to detect, as it is enabled through third-party systems, such as child support (Cook et al., 2023; Kaittila et al., 2022; Natalier, 2018) and financial products, such as joint loans, which afford perpetrators opportunities for ongoing financial control over victim-survivors (Cook et al., 2023; Kaittila et al., 2022; Johnson et al., 2022a, b).

In line with this research, for the remainder of this paper, we use the term EA to encompass economic control and exploitation, economic and employment sabotage, as well as financial harassment, withholding resources and stealing (Johnson et al., 2022a, b; Kaittila et al., 2022). We focus on EA perpetrated by current or former intimate partners to foreground the intersections between gendered and family violence, women’s assumed domestic role, and economic insecurity. We examine both within-relationship and post-separation EA as the impacts of economic abuse may be felt during and long after leaving an abusive relationship (Cardenas et al., 2021; Hing et al., 2021, 2022; Johnson et al., 2022a, b; Kaittila et al., 2022).

The empirical and conceptual literature on women’s experiences of EA within and following intimate partner relationships reveals several themes that are pertinent to the design and conduct of interventions. First, EA often co-exists with other forms of violence, but can come to replace other forms as women leave abusive relationships (Johnson et al., 2022a, b; Kaittila et al., 2022; Stylianou, 2018; Ulmestig & Eriksson, 2017). As Cortis and Bullen (2016, p. 100) note, “violent ex-partners may intensify financial abuse when other forms of control are lost, using financial matters as a way to continue to control women’s lives after separation”. As such, EA can begin at any point in or after an intimate partner relationship, but its perpetration and effects can continue long after the relationships has ended as perpetrators seek to continue to control and disempower. Second, EA is difficult to discern and detect, including sometimes by victim-survivors themselves. Often, complex webs of institutional arrangements, including banking, child support, credit scores and housing are the sites where economic abuse is experienced and enacted (Cook et al., 2023; Bullock et al., 2020; Kaittila et al., 2022).

Third, women’s experiences of EA, and the prospects for prevention, escape or recovery, are contextualised by other intersectional disadvantages and structural oppressions (Barrios et al., 2021; Bhandari & Sabri, 2020; Bullock et al., 2020; Cardenas, 2023; Cardenas et al., 2021; Joyner & Marsh, 2011; Kaittila et al., 2022; West, 2021). For example, women of colour are more likely to endure disproportionately worse outcomes post-separation, as the impacts of poverty and domestic violence are experienced more acutely among marginalised groups (Bullock et al., 2020; Cardenas et al., 2021; Joyner & Mash, 2011; West, 2021). In addition, cultural norms, immigration status and systemic racism can compound to impact upon women’s ability to leave abusive partners and trap women in relationships. Institutional issues associated with EA in IPV are keenly felt by Black women, as compounding gender and race-based oppressions limit help-seeking and trust in authorities (Bullock et al., 2020; West, 2021). Barrios and colleagues (2021) stress the need for attention on the complex ways in which compounding oppressions influence women’s opportunities to leave an abusive partner. Leaving abusive relationships requires resources, and individual, relational, and structural oppressions overwhelmingly experienced by women of colour constrains access to such vital resources (Barrios et al., 2021).

How interventions take up these relational, institutional and structural issues and address them in their programs is what this review seeks to examine.

The Problems Addressed by Economic Abuse Interventions

Central to the success of interventions will be how well programs understand and respond to the insidious nature of EA. For example, the academic literature suggests that it will be important for interventions to recognise that EA may: be perpetrated through complex webs of behaviours and tactics, including third-party systems; be difficult to identify as abuse by services and even victim survivors; co-exist alongside, or replace, other forms of abuse over a relationship life-course; and be compounded by other intersectional disadvantages. Interventions that fail to consider these features within their designs may not well subscribed or effective (PenzeyMoog, 2021).

Empirical research on interventions, however, may not explicitly describe their programmatic assumptions or how they have considered these issues. These logics may be discernible in the program aims, activities, eligibility criteria and evaluation measures, which point to the program’s implicit causal logic and the expected outcomes. To make the causal logics of the intervention studies explicit, insights from critical policy studies (Bacchi, 2009; Jamrozik & Nocella, 1998) provide a useful means of identifying and assessing the values underpinning social welfare measures.

In 1999, Carol Bacchi examined an extensive range of Australian social policy interventions, finding that these programs often did not address the gendered problems that women and mothers experienced, but rather were conceived to solve political problems. A decade later, Bacchi (2009) published a methodological framework for examining the social underpinnings of policy interventions; starting with the policy solution and tracing the causal logics back to reveal the problem that such a solution might seek to address. Bacchi’s (2009) approach, the ‘What’s the problem represented to be?’ (WPR) approach, has been taken up across a wide range of, often gendered, policy domains to examine the implicit problems that programs, including family violence programs (Breton, 2022; Murray & Powell, 2009; Riemann, 2019; Yates, 2020) address. Bacchi’s (2009, p. 2) approach invites researchers to consider six questions when analysing a social intervention:

  1. 1.

    What’s the problem represented to be in a specific program or policies?

  2. 2.

    What deep-seated presuppositions or assumptions (conceptual logics) underlie this representation of the “problem”?

  3. 3.

    How has this representation of the “problem” come about?

  4. 4.

    What is left unproblematic in this problem representation? Where are the silences? Can the “problem” be conceptualized differently?

  5. 5.

    What effects (discursive, subjectification, lived) are produced by this representation of the “problem”?

  6. 6.

    How and where has this representation of the “problem” been produced, disseminated, and defended? How has it been and/or how can it be disrupted and replaced?

Taken together, these questions enable researchers to examine how the framing of a problem may limit the scope of its possible solutions. Following Bacchi (2009), this review interrogates the ways that interventions presented as possible or partial ‘solutions’ to the problem of EA frame the nature of problem and its causal logics. We now turn to describe our method of assembling and analysing the intervention literature to develop a critical account of how EA is conceptualised, as well as intervention strengths and weaknesses given this critical framing.

Method

The scope of the literature search was guided by a qualitative meta-synthesis approach to collect data on economic abuse in IPV interventions and make more meaningful findings (Jovanovski & Cook, 2019; Finfgeld-Connett, 2018). Search terms were guided by the research question: How does the Academic literature frame the problem of economic abuse and its solutions? To capture both ‘financial’ and ‘economic’ abuse framings, both terms were used. In light of the need to interrogate the ‘solutions’ to economic abuse in intimate relationships, the authors searched terms ‘prevention’, ‘intervention’ and ‘crisis’ to capture a broad scope of responses to the problem of EA. Given the dearth of literature on prevention, interventions into, and crisis responses to economic abuse as a standalone issue, the decision to include articles that covered programs targeted at IPV broadly was governed by the rationale that, at the very least, economic abuse was a factor of intimate-partner abuse that required intervention. In order to develop a systematic account of interventions to address EA during and following the breakdown of intimate partner relationships, the following search term blockswere used to search whole articles: ‘financial abuse and prevention’; ‘financial abuse and intervention’; financial abuse and crisis’; economic abuse and prevention’; economic abuse and intervention’; economic abuse and crisis’.The search was conducted in 2022. Searching in EBSCOhost and Scopus, the search blocks returned a total of 1,155 items, after duplicates were removed. The retrieved studies provided sufficient details of the interventions, so gathering supplemental papers or contacting primary authors was not required.

Exclusion Criteria

The search results, including citation details and abstracts, were imported into NVivo and reviewed against the exclusion criteria. Studies were excluded if they were not peer reviewed or not related to EA in current or former intimate partner relationships. Of the 1,155 items, 1069 were omitted at this stage. The excluded items comprised: non-peer-reviewed publications such as reports, book reviews and commentaries; and peer-reviewed articles about forms of abuse outside the scope of the study, such as substance, elder, child or non-IPV sexual abuse, or topics unrelated to the study’s focus, such as medical or psychological interventions, or homelessness crisis accommodation.

Inclusion Criteria

For the remaining 86 articles, the abstracts were reviewed to determine each study’s eligibility for inclusion in the analysis. The inclusion criteria were that the study must report: (1) empirical data from an intervention; (2) focus, at least in part, on EA given such abuse is often reported alongside other forms of abuse; (3) abuse occurring within the context of a current or former intimate partner relationship. The review process entailed two authors independently reading and coding each abstract for eligibility. If there was disagreement, the full article was reviewed and discussed until consensus was reached, resulting in 11 included and 75 excluded articles. The included articles comprise a combination of evaluations of intervention programs and secondary analyses of empirical data derived from intervention programs (see Table 1). One of the included studies provided a critique of intervention methods as well as a report of program outcomes (Seith, 2001).

Table 1 Overview of definitions, types of responses to IPV, and participants or data sources for studies
Full size table

Analysis

Prior to applying the Bacchian framework, article data were organised into the following categories: the featured definition of economic and/or financial abuse; the study participant cohort; the type of prevention/intervention/crisis respone; the aim of the response; and the relationship stage. Understanding intimate-partner violence through a gender lens ensures that primary aggressors (most often men in heterosexual partnerships) are kept in view. The data were then organised following a sociological interrogation into gender-based violence responses at the individual, interactional, and structural levels (Anderson, 2005; Risman, 2004). These categories were then abductively analysed against Bacchi’s framework to develop understandings around what the problem of economic abuse is represented to be.

We began our analysis by coding the interventions into categories that meaningfully summarised and explained the studies, such as the type of program described, the program aim(s) and participant cohort, how the program was evaluated, and the stage of the relationship at which the intervention was aimed. To make sense of what the interventions might have hoped to achieve, and the logic that underpinned the programs’ activities, we then applied Bacchi’s (2009) WPR approach by coding the papers into Bacchi’s six questions, noted above.

In the following results, we have separated the more descriptive elements of Bacchi’s (2009) framework (questions 1–2: (1) What’s the problem represented to be in a specific program or policies? (2) What deep-seated presuppositions or assumptions (conceptual logics) underlie this representation of the “problem”?) from the more interpretive (questions 4–6: 4. What is left unproblematic in this problem representation? Where are the silences? Can the “problem” be conceptualized differently? 5. What effects (discursive, subjectification, lived) are produced by this representation of the “problem”? 6. How and where has this representation of the “problem” been produced, disseminated, and defended? How has it been and/or how can it be disrupted and replaced? ) to differentiate the information presented by the study authors from our insights, derived through a sociological critique of how social problems are managed (Jamrozik & Nocella, 1998). Our findings address Bacchi’s (2009) first, second, fifth, fourth and sixth questions in such order, without taking up an analysis of how the problem of EA came about (question 3), as such a genealogical account is beyond the scope of our analysis. Following the distinction between Bacchi’s descriptive and interpretive questions, our results first provide an overview of the 11 articles, including if – and how – the ‘problem’ of EA was defined therein, and the way that such a framing acknowledged or silenced particular ways of understanding and thus intervening in the problem. In the subsequent ‘solutions’ section, we group the studies into various ‘types’ of interventions described in the articles, providing an account of the causal logics inherent within each type. Our analysis reflects on the problems that the EA interventions sought to address and the logics that underpinned their programmatic methods, and concludes with a discussion on the lived effects, silence and omissions in problem framings, and the potential for transformative structural reform.

Results

The Problem-framing of Economic Abuse Within IPV Intervention Programs

In this section, Bacchi’s initial question, “What’s the problem represented to be in a specific program or policies?” is addressed. Across the studies, EA was referred to as one form of violence amid a suite of abusive behaviours within intimate partner violence (see Table 1). When explicitly defined, which was not often the case, EA was identified as partners withholding or taking their partner’s money or restricting resources (Abramsky et al., 2019; Bridges et al., 2015; Griffin & Koss, 2002; Gupta et al., 2013). As such, the way that EA was framed within the intervention studies aligned most typically with economic control and withholding resources, as opposed to economic exploitation, economic or employment sabotage, financial harassment or stealing (Adams et al., 2008; Johnson et al., 2022a, b; Kaittila et al., 2022; Postmus et al., 2016).

Importantly, across the studies, the perpetrator was largely invisible. IPV, and EA as part of this constellation of abuse, was frequently framed as a women’s problem, such as when the aims of the intervention referred to reducing women’s risk of abuse (Abramsky et al., 2019; Ranganathan et al., 2021). For example,

Risk factors associated with IPV in South Africa include women’s poverty and low education, gender inequitable attitudes, and acceptability of IPV (Ranganathan et al., 2021, p. 7729).

Microfinance-based interventions, cash transfer programmes, and other forms of livelihoods programming have in some cases and in some settings been shown to reduce women’s risk of IPV (Abramsky et al., 2019, p. 2).

In addition, women’s responsibility for managing IPV and EA were framed in the following ways: Women’s access to support (Selestine et al., 2023), increasing women’s empowerment – both economic and relational (Abramsky et al., 2019; Cardenas et al., 2021; Gupta et al., 2013; Ranganathan et al., 2021; Selestine et al., 2023; Stylianou et al., 2019), and improving women’s quality of life (Cardenas et al., 2021). From the perspectives of victim-survivors who were interviewed in the Stylianou et al. (2019) study, financial empowerment included autonomy, control over their own finances, and personal power. Disempowerment, on the other hand, was described in Ranganathan and colleagues’ (2021, p. 7755) intervention as women’s lack of “power within self” (e.g., self-confidence) and within her relationship (e.g., perceived contribution to the relationship and household decision-making), however, what was missing from this study was victim-survivors’ perspective on such issues.

In Seith’s (2001, p. 800) study on the ways in which social workers intervene in domestic violence she makes a similar observation, noting how, historically, “rather than confronting the violent men, social workers sought to monitor the women, especially whether they fulfilled their roles as wives and mothers.” Evidently, women have long been centred as not just a victim of abuse, but as cause of the abuse if they failed to meet societal gendered demands. Seith (2001, p. 807) further critiqued the reductive or avoidant ways that male perpetrators of abuse were dealt with by noting that, “women’s exploitation was recorded and described as men failing to give their partners enough housekeeping money”. The juxtaposition of women’s exploitation with men’s failure implies a distinct lack of perpetrator accountability, as men’s actions are obscured and diminished while the impacts are ascribed to women.

Across the interventions, the implication of the invisible perpetrator was that EA was often framed as a woman’s problem and one that she must solve through self-improvement. Subsequently, across the studies, the responsibility to intervene in, escape or recover from intimate partner violence – including EA – was overwhelmingly assigned to those who endured it. Only three studies included data collection involving men as well as women, as is explored in more detail in the following section (Bridges et al., 2015; Gupta et al., 2013; Mankowski et al., 2002).

Framing the Solutions to Economic Abuse: Individualistic, Relational, and Structural Logics

In order to understand the deep-seated assumptions underlying the framing of EA as a woman’s problem, this section explores Bacchi’s second question (2. What deep-seated presuppositions or assumptions (conceptual logics) underlie this representation of the “problem”?) Six studies took an individualistic approach to preventing or intervening in EA, involving such approaches as psychoeducation, group therapy, clinical interventions, and women’s economic empowerment (Bridges et al., 2015; Cardenas et al., 2021; Griffin & Koss, 2002; Joyner & Mash, 2011; Mankowski et al., 2002; Stylianou et al., 2019). These interventions focused on such individualised activities such as raising awareness, providing education, learning financial literacy skills (for women) and developing self-help and anger management strategies (for men). Four ‘relational’ studies incorporated microfinance interventions with gender-based training to facilitate more equitable financial and social relationships between intimate partners (Abramsky et al., 2019; Gupta et al., 2013; Ranganathan et al., 2021; Selestine et al., 2023), while one study provided a critique of the role of social workers when intervening in IPV, including the financial implications of EA (Seith, 2001). In the following sections, we present these approaches in turn to identify the causal logics that underpin what constitutes EA and how it operates, and thus how it may be disrupted or prevented through the intervention.

Individualistic Psychoeducation

Turning first to Bridges and colleagues’ (2015) strategy that intended to prevent IPV by educating young people about healthy relationships, the approach included psychoeducational tools comprised of an online information sheet, and a follow-up knowledge quiz and vignettes that described various forms of abuse. Applying Bacchi‘s (2009) framework, the problem that this solution invoked was people not knowing what constituted EA. The causal logic was that if young people, here 72 women and 28 men, were informed about the nature of IPV, they would either not perpetrate such abuse, or would be able to avoid or remove themselves from such abusive behaviour. Here it is important to highlight that just 28 of the research participants were young men, acknowledging the gender of the university students recruited and research participant cohorts more generally, but simultaneously reinforcing the norm that women have a primary role to play in preventing male violence.

Individualistic Men’s Intervention Programs

Acknowledging that all aspects of IPV, including EA, “[function] to intimidate and subjugate women”, Mankowski and colleagues (2002, p. 168) provided one of the only studies to centre male perpetrators. They analysed ‘batterer intervention programs’, comparing unstructured group therapy – during which men share trauma and challenge masculine views through peer support – with a “feminist power and control model [the Duluth Model] favoured by most victim advocates”. The Duluth Model positions male violence as a mechanism of patriarchy that frames men’s entitlement to abuse their female partners. Applying Bacchi (2009), however, revealed that the ‘problem’ being ‘solved’ by both perpetrator programs was consistent: men’s lack of understanding of their violence and oppression of women and the social unacceptability of such behaviour. The purported logics of the respective programs were that by sharing trauma and challenging masculine views (unstructured group therapy) or by identifying partner abuse as the consequence of patriarchal entitlement (the Duluth Model), abusive men would come to understand the causes of their violence, be it trauma, masculine views or the patriarchy, and subsequently lessen such behaviour.

Individualistic Clinical Interventions

Two studies reviewed clinical screening interventions that engaged nurses as primary points of IPV screening and subsequent service referral (Griffin & Koss, 2002; Joyner & Mash, 2011), the primary aims of these which was to identify abuse. Suggestions for referrals included “shelters, support groups”, “legal advocacy”, “Internet resources” and “brochures and pamphlets” (Griffin & Koss, 2002, p. 8). These interventions placed responsibility to identify and intervene in IPV on primary carers (nurses, who are also overwhelmingly women), and through the provision of referrals, the responsibility to take up these resources was placed on victim-survivors.

Joyner and Mash (2011) identified men’s poor mental health and men’s alcohol abuse as causes of EA. Despite this framing, in which men’s mental health and alcohol abuse were causal factors for abuse, the approach was to offer women a clinical intervention delivered by nurses (Joyner & Mash, 2011). Joyner and Mash (2011) highlighted significant rates of IPV in South Africa and, despite some unwillingness among health practitioners to intervene, suggested that “enquiry about IPV offers a way of ‘uncovering and reframing a hidden stigma’ to provide benefit, even if no action follows forthwith” (Joyner & Mash, 2011, p. 2, citing Bradley et al., 2002). Joyner and Mash (2011) reviewed the intervention, targeted at women aged 18 years and over, living across rural and urban South Africa, with a history of IPV in the last 24 months. The intervention process included: a systematic record of abuse – which included EA –medicolegal history, mental health screening, a safety assessment and planning tool including referrals to services, and a follow-up appointment one month after the intervention. Women in the study reported benefits of the intervention, such as feeling heard and understood, and appreciation for the advice provided by the primary carer (nurse). While these outcomes were positive, the causal logic of intervening by screening and referring women for IPV meant that men’s abuse, as well as their alcohol abuse and poor mental health, were positioned as being women’s responsibility to disclose and seek help to address, implicitly marking men’s behaviour out as beyond direct scrutiny or intervention. In addition, the ability or consequences of women in abusive relationships taking on this role were not acknowledged or addressed.

On women’s capacity or safety to take up interventions, the review of the RADAR (Remember, Ask, Document, Assess and Review) clinical screening tool intervention (Griffin & Koss, 2002) did report victim-survivor participant barriers to disclosing abuse, including fear of negative consequences from their partner, police, and clinicians. The study authors highlighted problematic interactions with authorities during which women were victim-blamed, for example, “’What did you do to provoke the attack?’ or ‘Why don’t you leave your abuser?’” (Griffin & Koss, 2002, p. 6). However, our analysis of the program logic revealed that women’s reported difficulty in preventing, managing, disclosing, or escaping violence was deemed irrelevant, as the focus of the intervention was on identifying and documenting abusive behaviour. Within the framing of the intervention, however, victim-blaming served to reinforce and strengthen women’s responsibility to save herself from ongoing abuse by behaving appropriately, including reporting abuse to authorities – in this case health authorities – and leaving, or attempting to leave, an abusive partner.

Individualistic Economic Empowerment

A final form of individualised responsibility – identified in two of the intervention studies (Cardenas et al., 2021; Stylianou et al., 2019) – involved women pursuing personal empowerment to remedy the impacts of IPV including EA, through financial literacy programs. Cardenas et al. (2021) assessed interventions used by domestic violence organisations across the USA and Puerto Rico whereby a control group received standard treatment while a treatment group received standard treatment and five sessions in a financial literacy program.

From the perspectives of victim-survivors, Stylianou and colleagues (2019) found that the acquisition of knowledge through a financial literacy program on how to manage money was critical to recovery from IPV. In addition, participation in financial literacy programs was also reported to improve quality of life post-separation (Cardenas et al., 2021). However, Stylianou and colleagues reported that not all participants supported or trusted financial institutions, and yet the financial literacy programs focussed primarily on the use and navigation of such systems. The causal logic of the intervention suggests that if women gain financial literacy, they can avoid or minimise the impact of EA or lessen the perpetrator’s enactment. The implication of such framing reinforces women’s individualised responsibility to reduce, resist, and recover from EA and IPV, all while learning to navigate systems they may or may not trust. By promoting women’s financial literacy as a solution to the problem of men’s EA, the implication is that women are responsible for the impact of the perpetrator’s behaviour.

Relational Economic Empowerment and Gender-based Training

Four economic empowerment studies intervened by providing microfinance, coupled with a gender-relations intervention (Abramsky et al., 2019; Gupta et al., 2013; Ranganathan et al., 2021; Selestine et al., 2023). These interventions sought to economically empower women as well as develop couples’ understandings of equitable relationships. Unlike the individualistic financial literacy interventions described previously, these interventions sought to intervene in the intimate partners’ financial relations, on the implicit assumption that this would reduce abuse.

The four studies identified structural issues as fundamental to the enactment of EA. For example, poverty and sociodemographic disparities were acknowledged as risk factors for men’s perpetration of IPV in North Western Tanzania and Rural North West Province, South Africa (Abramsky et al., 2019; Ranganathan et al., 2021; Selestine et al., 2023) while the broad social acceptability of men’s violence towards women was recognised as a leading cause of EA in rural Côte d’Ivoire (Gupta et al., 2013). However, the interventions did not facilitate cultural change. Rather, the interventions acknowledged that within relationships, traditional gender roles can shape abusive interactions between partners and can cause men’s disregard for women’s worth within the family and household (Abramsky et al., 2019; Gupta et al., 2013; Ranganathan et al., 2021). Economic empowerment was deemed an effective solution to IPV for victim-survivors if programs included a gender-based relational intervention (Abramsky et al., 2019; Gupta et al., 2013; Ranganathan et al., 2021; Selestine et al., 2023), however, the quality of intervention services was noted to suffer if there was a lack of recognition of gender inequity and misogyny in the provision of interventions, such as microfinancing for women’s economic empowerment (Selestine et al., 2023). Gupta and colleagues (2013) also argued that economic interventions alone are limited when they fail to recognise the gendered ideals and inequalities that often shape IPV, including in post-conflict settings where women may have taken on traditionally stereotypical male roles during periods of societal conflict. In response, the inclusion of ‘gender dialogue groups’ and ‘discussion about gender roles in the home’ in the intervention by Gupta and colleagues (2013) was claimed to significantly lessen the likelihood of IPV and specifically, EA.

Both Abramsky and colleagues (2019) and Selestine and colleagues (2023) reported on data derived from the same ‘social empowerment intervention’ delivered using the MAISHA curriculum, a participatory gender training model, used in conjunction with a case-control group microfinance initiative. Abramsky and colleagues (2019) aimed to assess the relationship between women’s income and her risk of IPV, while Selestine and colleagues (2023) aimed to understand women’s decisions to seek support after experiencing IPV drawing on interview data collected at baseline (before the intervention), setting the tone for the immense challenge faced by facilitators of the MAISHA social empowerment intervention. The authors concluded that, in times of crisis due to IPV, women sought support from family and friends rather than those outside of their personal networks, highlighting the social norm of male-perpetrated violence as a private matter. Furthermore, the social acceptability of IPV in northwestern Tanzania was also reported to speak to broader social and political barriers for women to seeking help (Selestine et al., 2023).

Following the MAISHA intervention, Abramsky et al. (2019) found that women in the social empowerment treatment group were less likely to expect their partner to be the main provider and were more willing to challenge male authority compared to women in the control group that did not receive the training. The evident causal logic was that if women were more willing to challenge gendered power dynamics, men’s abuse of power through EA may cease to occur. However, long-term effects of women’s resistance to male authority were not reported. Rather, in some circumstances, it was reported that men became violent and ‘disciplined’ their wives when women did not fulfil gendered expectations (Abramsky et al., 2019). The MAISHA program thus illustrates the very real danger of positioning women as responsible for managing IPV through increased knowledge and ‘empowerment’, while leaving gendered familial and societal power dynamics intact.

A Structural Critique of the Failings of Institutional Interventions

Seith’s (2001) review of social work intervention casefiles offered a critique of the capacity of Swiss social services to intervene in domestic violence. Seith found that in 300 social services casefiles of Swiss women, half of them had endured EA during their relationship. Seith found that casefiles revealed some descriptions of abuse as “disputes between spouses”, which ultimately framed such violence as a minor event, or a genderless disagreement between two equal parties. She described the social workers’ role as ‘institutionalised’ given their focus on financial assistance, acting “as a triage point before referring women to other institutions” (p.814). Efforts by social workers extended beyond facilitating financial aid, such as through the provision of employment training, assistance finding a new home, or acting as a support person during interviews with other institutions. However, the study revealed “gaps and missing links in interagency cooperation, often to the detriment of abuse women” (Seith, 2001, p. 814) While public funds were reported to be able to change the lives of abused women, economic empowerment alone was not enough to stop violence. As Seith (2001, p. 817) summarised, “economic empowerment is no substitute for interventions explicitly directed at ensuring women’s safety.”

In the following sections, we discuss the discursive, subjectification and lived effects of the problem framing; the silences and omissions; and finally, how the problem of EA is reproduced and what disruption can take place to offer alternative framings to prevent and end men’s EA of women.

Discussion

Discursive, Subjectification, and Lived Effects of the Problem Framing and Their Silences

Bacchi’s fifth question, “5. What effects (discursive, subjectification, lived) are produced by this representation of the “problem”?”, highlights just how critical it is to not overlook the, at times, subtle underrepresentation of men, or worse, complete invisibility of men who perpetrate IPV. The ramifications of excluding males from the ‘problem’ and thus ‘solutions’ to EA mean their abusive behaviour is not addressed, and for women subjected to such violence, there are no guarantees that the abuse will stop as a result of intervention.

The lack of definitions of EA within the intervention studies suggested that it is, at times, overlooked in terms of its significance, or is poorly understood in scholarship on IPV. We found that definitions mostly described economic control and withholding, while the male perpetrator of such behaviour was notably absent. In contrast to the invisible perpetrator, women were highly visible in definitions of IPV, and of EA. Intervention approaches centred women’s risk, women’s access to support, women’s empowerment, and women’s quality of life (Abramsky et al., 2019; Cardenas et al., 2021; Gupta et al., 2013; Ranganathan et al., 2021; Selestine et al., 2023; Stylianou et al., 2019). Interventions included programs that offered educational, social, and economic empowerment, clinical screening and referral, or gender-based training with the aim to improve couple power dynamics.

Across all interventions, with the exception of Mankowski and colleagues’ (2002) review of male-perpetrator interventions (such as group therapy), the implication was that women victim-survivors must fix EA through self-improvement, and in some cases through their efforts to ‘improve’ their partner (Abramsky et al., 2019; Gupta et al., 2013; Ranganathan et al., 2021; Selestine et al., 2023). Given the compounding oppressions faced by women of colour (as identified by Bullock et al., 2020), demanding that women seek self-improvement in order to prevent or recover from IPV and EA assumes that women have the resources and privilege to do so. Furthermore, by framing EA as a problem that - in order to be solved - requires women’s self-improvement, possibilities for male perpetrator accountability and reform are limited. As Bacchi (2009, p. 16) put it, “If some options for social intervention are closed off by the way in which a ‘problem’ is represented, this can have devastating effects for certain people.” Here, the closed nature of options for social intervention into men’s invisible perpetration can have devastating effects on women who endure – and who are positioned as at least partially responsible for – such abuse. As the interventions mostly took place within abusive relationships, the lasting impact of EA beyond separation also remained invisible, much like the perpetrator.

On a perpetrator responsibility continuum from ‘entirely responsible’ to ‘not at all responsible’, most interventions focussed on what women could do to ameliorate EA, either through sharing responsibility for the abuse with their partner (e.g., gender-based training), or by taking full responsibility for their own safety by, for example, gaining financial literacy. At one end of the continuum, men were positioned as entirely responsible for the abuse and their reform was demanded through either therapy or accountability (Mankowski et al., 2002). Towards the centre of the continuum, perpetrator responsibility then became a matter of relational equity, as men’s participation in couple’s gender-based training was posited as a solution to their abusive tendencies (see Abramsky et al., 2019; Bridges et al., 2015; Gupta et al., 2013; Ranganathan et al., 2021; Selestine et al., 2023). While the interventions here aimed to share responsibility with the perpetrator, women’s responsibility was further evidenced through their participation in both the intervention and the respective research projects.

At the ‘not at all responsible’ end of the continuum, the male perpetrator was entirely overlooked as women’s financial literacy and personal empowerment framed the problem in its entirety. As the majority of interventions demonstrated, women were largely held responsible for self-improvement in the face of IPV, in particular, economic control and withholding. As Joyner and Mash (2011, p.6) similarly pointed out, “Some [victim-survivor participants] resented a perceived onus on women to resolve problems rather than zero tolerance for men’s abusive behaviour and proactive efforts to get functional interventions in place.”

Men’s lack of accountability for the perpetration of abuse was the binary subjectification of framing women as responsible for self-improvement during times of EA. The inference of this binary subjectification of irresponsibility/responsibility for males/females, respectively, is that women must live with the consequences of EA, while men continue unchecked. By living with the consequences (or as Bacchi put it – the “lived effects”) of EA, women are more likely to endure lasting poverty, dependence on abusers, and potential homelessness (Bullock et al., 2020; Kaittila et al., 2022).

Considering Bacchi’s (2009) fourth question, “ 4. What is left unproblematic in this problem representation? Where are the silences? Can the “problem” be conceptualized differently?”, the identification of the invisible male perpetrator, the silences and omissions in interventions into EA become stark; making the perpetrator invisible in problem framings of EA maintains the patriarchal status quo. The failure to problematise the male perpetrator in definitions of and interventions into EA reproduces oppressive patriarchal views on women’s responsibility in the domestic sphere, and in her intimate relationships. The individualised binary of responsibility/irresponsibility in abusive (heterosexual) intimate relationships leaves little scope for broader societal interventions that alleviate the burden placed on women to self-improve in order to avoid male-perpetrated violence. However, our critique of interventions on a continuum of perpetrator responsibility, allows the problem of EA and its solutions to be viewed differently. First, the female victim-survivor is no longer framed as the party responsible to bring about change. Second, male perpetrator accountability becomes highly visible. Subsequently, future interventions into EA should be assessed against the extent to which they reduce or prevent harm inflicted by men against women, as the scope of men’s responsibility is brought to the fore. Finally, the paucity of interventions at the institutional level demonstrates the glaring absence of state or institutional interventions into EA. This absence presents opportunities for disruptive and transformative structural reform.

Limitations

In reporting our results, we acknowledge that our methods are constrained by the following limitations: (1) we can only analyse what authors included in their papers, framed by journal scope and word count; (2) our search only included interventions published in academic journals. If the description of interventions were freed from the constraints of journal publishing (e.g., word count limitations), such as in a report, we may find very different results. As such, our analysis speaks to how interventions are framed in academic research. More work is likely being done in the government and community sectors, which future research should seek to include; (3) our search only included studies published in English, which limits the completeness and thus applicability of our findings; and (4) all articles addressed economic abuse as a feature of IPV, rather than as a standalone issue. As such, the literature does not speak to interventions that sought exclusively to address EA. Rather, our review examines how IPV interventions have conceived of and addressed EA as one form of abuse experienced by program participants. (5) We acknowledge that the small number of search terms is a potential limitation of this study. We searched anywhere in the article which justified including any mention of economic or financial abuse, and prevention, intervention, or crisis. One or more of these terms was likely to have featured anywhere in the article. Finally. the included studies centred the perspectives of those who participated in programs, rather than the perspectives of perpetrators. Given this, the effectiveness of the interventions for perpetrator can not be commented upon.

Implications and Future Directions

Disrupting Representations of EA in Academic Intervention Literature

In order to implement disruptive and transformative structural reform, representations of EA must also be reframed. In response to Bacchi’s (2009) final question, “6. How and where has this representation of the “problem” been produced, disseminated, and defended? How has it been and/or how can it be disrupted and replaced?”, we turn to interrogate the ways in which the “problem” of EA has been produced, disseminated, and defended, and can be potentially disrupted and replaced. First, the problem of EA must be reframed to represent those who enact it, which in this circumstance, is predominantly men. The inclusion of the perpetrator frames responsibility at the source.

Second, problem framing of EA must resist the suggestion that women are by and large responsible for self-improvement before, during, and after the onset of EA. We agree that women’s economic empowerment and quality of life are worthy goals and vital to the recovery of victim-survivors. As Kiani and colleagues (2021) found, when coupled with community-based programs, economic interventions into IPV can reduce the risk of domestic violence. Recent research has also reiterated the benefits (e.g., self-efficacy, financial knowledge) of financial literacy and financial safety-planning for survivors of IPV (Johnson et al., 2022). However, by centring women’s self-improvement in intervention descriptions and definitions, perpetrators remain unaccountable, as do financial and government institutions through which such abuse may be perpetrated. In line with recent calls to promote ‘safety by design’ principles in financial and banking platforms, we argue that institutions are fundamental sites of EA intervention (Cook et al., 2022; PenzeyMoog, 2021).

This critique of problem framing provided here is not intended to diminish or overlook the lived success of interventions such as women’s economic empowerment. Yet, as authors across the interventions addressed, the need for structural change in the way IPV and EA are dealt with is long overdue. Over 20 years ago, Mankowski and colleagues (2002, p. 182) pointed to the “limits of existing institutions” in dealing with IPV. Two decades later, structural change was still required:

There is a need to design interventions to challenge these structural factors that shape justification and meaning attached to IPV, and decisions to seek support. This must also be accompanied by changes in social norms that perpetuate and condone violence against women (Selestine et al. 2023, p. 15).

By reframing the problem of EA as a perpetrator’s problem, changes in social norms may follow suit. The goal here is to turn attention to the act of harm committed by men, rather than demanding that women seek help to ameliorate such harm or improve themselves to prevent or minimise abuse. The perpetrator is responsible for the harm he causes through coercive control, EA, and the various, complex tactics that the abuse entails. Problem framings across interventions into EA, and IPV more broadly, ought to centre the male perpetrator in all definitions of EA and the tactics used to maintain oppressive and violent control over their female intimate partners.

Conclusion

This paper conceptualises a continuum of perpetrator responsibility, along which various IPV interventions addressing EA place blame onto perpetrators or onto victim-survivors. The included interventions studies framed EA, most typically, as economic control and withholding resources, as opposed to economic exploitation, economic or employment sabotage, financial harassment or stealing. The qualitative meta-synthesis of 11 studies reporting on interventions into IPV including EA revealed that women continue to be responsibilized for EA committed against them through interventions designed to interrupt or respond to such abuse. By individualising prevention and recovery, EA is situated as a ‘women’s problem’, resolved through a victim-survivor’s own actions, and not through a change by a perpetrator. This analysis reveals an opportunity to centre the perpetrator in problem framings of EA and IPV. In addition, further development of financial and government institutional EA interventions grounded by principles of safety by design is warranted, where perpetrators’ abusive behaviours are identified and disrupted before causing harm to women victim-survivors.