Economic violence: hidden, harmful and still overlooked
Economic violence is often invisible, but its impact is devastating.
The European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) defines economic violence as any act or behavior that causes economic harm to a person. Economic violence can include economic control, economic exploitation and economic sabotage. In intimate relationships, this can mean controlling money, restricting access to education or work, damaging property, or refusing to meet financial obligations such as alimony(1).
| Economic control | Economic exploitation | Economic sabotage |
|---|---|---|
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Preventing, limiting, or controlling a victim's finances and related decision-making. Examples:
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Using the economic resources of a victim to the abuser's advantage. Examples:
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Preventing a victim from pursuing, obtaining, or maintaining employment and/or education. Examples:
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Although economic violence can affect anyone, evidence consistently shows that women are disproportionately affected in intimate relationships. Economic violence undermines personal and professional development, economic independence, physical health and psychological well-being. Crucially, a lack of financial resources is one of the main reasons women are unable to leave abusive relationships(2).
At the EU level, there is clear recognition of the problem and the need for action. The Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence (Istanbul Convention) requires ratifying states to prevent and combat economic violence and to produce data on it. More recently, Directive (EU) 2024/1385 on combating violence against women and domestic violence strengthened this commitment.
Despite these legal frameworks, however, economic violence remains weakly addressed in national laws and poorly captured in data. While most EU Member States’ definitions of intimate partner or domestic violence cover physical, psychological and sexual violence, very few explicitly include economic violence. The results are telling: in 2021, only nine Member States explicitly criminalised forms of economic violence in their laws on domestic violence(3), and in 2023–2024 only 13 Member States had any data at all on female victims of economic violence(4).
Patchy laws lead to patchy data
The lack of a common legal and statistical definition has resulted in fragmented data collection across the EU.
To address this, EIGE developed a measurement framework with 13 indicators on intimate partner and domestic violence, to be collected through police and justice administrative records. One of these indicators focuses specifically on women victims of economic violence who reported this violence to the police. As mentioned above, data availability for this indicator is low.
Survey data helps fill some of the gaps. Economic violence was captured in the EU survey on gender-based violence against women and other forms of inter-personal violence (EU-GBV survey), coordinated by Eurostat in 18 Member States from 2020 to 2024(5). To complete EU coverage, the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) and EIGE jointly collected data in eight more Member States(6).
In the Eurostat survey, economic violence by an intimate partner was measured through two acts, embedded under psychological violence:
- controlling household finances or a woman’s spending;
- forbidding a woman to work.
Building on these indicators, the FRA–EIGE extended survey explicitly targeted six additional acts of economic violence, shedding light on behaviours that are usually overlooked (see these in Figure 1 below).
When we look more closely, economic violence is widespread
- Data from the extended FRA–EIGE survey reveals a stark reality: economic intimate partner violence affects a substantial share of women.
- Across the eight Member States covered, between 16 % of women who had ever had a partner in Germany and nearly one third in Hungary and Romania (32.7% and 32.8%, respectively) reported experiencing economic violence at least once in their lifetime.
- Women described a wide range of abusive behaviours, including partners interfering with employment or education, withholding or hiding money, restricting access to bank accounts, taking wages or benefits, or building up debt in their name. These acts reflect both direct economic harm and forms of control that undermine women’s long-term independence (Figure 1).
When economic violence is measured using only the two items available across all EU-27 Member States, the estimated prevalence drops to 8.2 %, ranging from 4.4 % in Portugal to 19.7 % in Romania(7).
Even this conservative measure, however, shows that economic violence is almost as widespread as physical intimate partner violence (9.3 %), highlighting how much remains hidden when definitions are narrow.
Furthermore, economic violence rarely happens in isolation. Among women who have experienced economic violence by an intimate partner, 90 % have also experienced psychological violence and 54 % have experienced physical violence.
It is also worth noting that, according to the most recent Eurobarometer survey, over 6 in 10 Europeans (72 % of women and 52 % of men) consider it is unacceptable for a man to control his wife or partner’s finances.
The psychological toll is severe
Economic violence is not ‘just’ about money.
Among women who experienced economic intimate partner violence:
- almost 9 in 10 in Denmark and Romania reported psychological problems as a consequence;
- across the eight Member States studied in the FRA–EIGE survey, the share of respondents reporting psychological harm ranged from 66 % to 85 %(8).
These findings reinforce a critical point: economic violence causes deep and lasting harm. The share of women reporting psychological problems as a consequence of economic violence is comparable to and in some cases higher than that reported for other recognised forms of violence, such as psychological violence or stalking.
Better evidence is essential for better policy
The data is clear: in some Member States, nearly one in three women have experienced economic violence by an intimate partner. In most cases, three out of four women suffer psychological consequences. Together, the evidence shows that economic violence is both widespread and damaging, yet remains insufficiently captured and systematically monitored.
That is why economic violence deserves:
- explicit recognition in national legislation; and
- systematic, comparable measurement across the EU through administrative data and survey data.
Shared definitions and robust, comparable data are essential to understand the scale of economic violence, its risk factors and consequences, and the needs of affected women.
Strengthening the evidence base makes economic violence visible. This is a necessary step to ensure it is addressed on an equal footing with other forms of violence against women.