The EASE Design Challenge report synthesizes key learnings, insights, and limitations from an initiative designed to engage students and professionals in developing innovative responses to technology-facilitated financial abuse. It highlights the persistent barriers survivors face when seeking support from financial institutions, underscoring critical gaps in current systems. In response, the Design Challenge aimed to catalyze survivor-centred, coordinated solutions that can identify and interrupt abuse, enable secure and autonomous account access, and provide clear, trauma-informed pathways for addressing coerced or fraudulent debt.
Learn more about the EASE – Economic Abuse Support & Empowerment Project
Survivors use a range of strategies and supports to navigate and resist the impacts of financial abuse, working to regain safety, control, and financial independence.
These infographics are based on a WomanACT survey (103) and interviews (10) with women and gender-diverse people in Ontario with lived experience of intimate partner violence. They highlight the impacts and lived realities of financial abuse, as well as the barriers survivors face when seeking support. The insights also surface practical strategies and advice shared by participants for navigating and responding to financial abuse.
Learn more about the EASE – Economic Abuse Support & Empowerment Project
Disclaimer: If you are in immediate danger or fear for your safety, please call 911 or your local emergency services immediately. Your safety is the top priority.
Financial abuse is often unseen. However, survivors say that its impact on their lives can be extreme.
These infographics are based on a WomanACT survey (103) and interviews (10) with women and gender-diverse people in Ontario with lived experience of intimate partner violence. They highlight the impacts and lived realities of financial abuse, as well as the barriers survivors face when seeking support. The insights also surface practical strategies and advice shared by participants for navigating and responding to financial abuse.
Learn more about the EASE – Economic Abuse Support & Empowerment Project
Disclaimer: If you are in immediate danger or fear for your safety, please call 911 or your local emergency services immediately. Your safety is the top priority.
Survivors describe financial abuse as ongoing control over their finances, where access to money, decision-making, and independence are restricted.
These infographics are based on a WomanACT survey (103) and interviews (10) with women and gender-diverse people in Ontario with lived experience of intimate partner violence. They highlight the impacts and lived realities of financial abuse, as well as the barriers survivors face when seeking support. The insights also surface practical strategies and advice shared by participants for navigating and responding to financial abuse.
Learn more about the EASE – Economic Abuse Support & Empowerment Project
Disclaimer: If you are in immediate danger or fear for your safety, please call 911 or your local emergency services immediately. Your safety is the top priority.
Financial systems are not neutral, they are embedded in broader social and gendered contexts and are shaped by them.
Being gender-inclusive in financial tech (fintech) design inherently requires a trauma-informed lens. Fintech tools are often designed from a gender-neutral perspective, which assumes all users have similar needs, risks, and relationships to money. This approach overlooks how financial control and coercion are gendered.
This factsheet outlines the principles of the trauma-informed approach, their definitions and examples of their application to financial technologies.
This brief present three key principles to guide the development of effective responses to technology-facilitated financial abuse in the context of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV). Identified through literature from Canada, the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom and grounded in consultations with survivors.
Service providers are incorporating these principles when designing solutions and practices to better support survivors, reduce harm, and prevent the misuse of financial technology. The brief outlines case studies of emerging, innovative practices that reflect these principles, aiming to enhance survivor safety, promote trauma-informed interventions, and raise awareness of this growing form of abuse.
The term innovative practices is used intentionally rather than “promising” or “best practices,” as these initiatives are still relatively new and require further evaluation to fully understand their effectiveness and long-term impact.
Economic and financial abuse impacts every part of a survivor’s life, causing stress, anxiety, depression, and a loss of self-esteem. It often leads to poverty, housing instability, and limited career opportunities. The social impacts can include feeling isolated and becoming financially dependent on their partner/spouse. Legal and financial consequences include coerced debt and legal vulnerabilities.
This visual report outlines the social impacts of financial and economic abuse, and real-life examples of survivor experiences.
While research on financial abuse as a form of intimate partner violence remains limited, financial abuse is commonly used to exert power and control over women, often occurring alongside other types of abuse. This form of abuse is impactful because it strips individuals of financial freedom and independence, with lasting effects such as damaged credit and housing instability.
This visual report explores what constitutes financial and economic abuse, real-life examples, and practical steps to protect your financial well-being.
Economic abuse affects many women and gender-diverse individuals in Canada, with rates as high as 1 in 3 women experiencing it from intimate partners.
The Economic Abuse Project: Providing a model of improved support for survivors of domestic violence (EASE), is a collaboration between credit specialists, anti-violence organizations, and financial institutions to address the impacts of economic and financial abuse on survivors of domestic violence. It involves support for survivors to rebuild credit and develop financial literacy, brings professionals together to collaborate for financial system change and build the capacity of professionals to recognize and respond to economic abuse.
The project is an adaptation of the UK-developed Domestic Economic Abuse Project (DEAP). The project improved outcomes for victims/survivors of domestic and economic abuse, enhanced understanding of economic abuse and identified areas for system change among the financial sector and other community agencies.
Publications
NEW!
Infographic: The Experience of Financial Abuse
Infographic: Strategies and Advice from Survivors
Infographic: The Impact of Financial Abuse
Trauma-informed principles in banking technology design
Innovative Practices for Identifying and Responding to Tech-Facilitated Financial Abuse
Infographic: Financial Safety Planning – Survivors of Intimate Partner Violence
Infographic: Economic and Financial Abuse – Key Terms
EASE Design Challenge
NEW!
This project has been funded through Women and Gender Equality Canada’s Women’s Program
The Safe and Stable Housing through Intentional Partnership (SSHIP) project aims to develop a comprehensive governance model and research process for collecting trauma-informed longitudinal housing data for diverse survivors of intimate partner violence (IPV). Through collaboration with community partners and pilot studies at key women’s shelters, SSHIP will innovate and test effective methods for understanding and addressing housing instability. The project’s ultimate goal is to scale these models and protocols, providing sustainable housing solutions and enhancing support for IPV survivors across Canada.
Safe and Stable Housing through Intentional Partnership (SSHIP) is supported in part by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.
