The Cost of Domestic Violence to Women’s Employment and Education

Globally, domestic violence will impact one in three women in their lifetime. On top of the physical, emotional and psychological damage done to them by domestic violence, there is an immense economic cost to their access to employment and education. Significant gaps remain in policy across government and universities to address the needs of women who have experienced domestic violence. 
 
In 2022, Professor Anne Summers released a report, The Choice: Violence or Poverty. This report published never before seen data from the 2016 Personal Safety Survey that showed that a majority (60%) of single mothers in Australia were victims of domestic violence and that half of these women were reliant on government benefits as their main source of income. This groundbreaking report prompted the federal government to make much-needed policy changes to payments for single mothers, allowing mothers to remain on the Parenting Payment Single until their youngest child was 14 (as opposed to 8) rather than being forced onto the lower paying JobSeeker payment. 
 
Using the same economic view of domestic violence, Professor Summers, in collaboration with Kristen Sobeck (ANU) and Thomas Shortridge (UTS) has published a second report, The Cost of Domestic Violence to Women’s Employment and Education. This report brings together four different data sources to reveal how domestic violence reduces women’s employment and undermines their education. It shows, for the first time, that there is an ‘employment gap’ and an ‘education gap’ between women who have experienced domestic violence and women who have not. These gaps have long-term consequences for the financial security of these victim-survivors of domestic violence. The report asks for workplaces and university to better support the needs of their female employees and students who are experiencing or have experienced domestic violence.