Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
33. International Congress of Psychology, Praha, Çek Cumhuriyeti, 21 Temmuz 2024, cilt.59, ss.581
Economic abuse is a unique form of intimate partner violence (IPV) that includes behaviours aimed at controlling, exploiting, and restricting the victim, thus making the victim dependent on the perpetrator. Even though economic abuse tends to be seen together with other IPV types and has similar patterns, it has only recently been studied in the psychology literature. In this study, we aimed to investigate the economic abuse experiences of married women in their intimate relationships. We chose a qualitative approach to take a deeper look at the subject. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight employed and five unemployed women (Mage = 43.2, SDage= 9.21). We asked about their own and other women's experiences of economic abuse and also how they respond to and are affected by economically abusive behaviours. The reflexive thematic analysis resulted in four themes: (i) economic abuse experiences, (ii) perceptions of economic abuse, (iii) consequences of economic abuse, and (iv) coping strategies against economic abuse. We found that women in Turkey are exposed to economic abuse perpetrated by their husbands in forms of economic control, economic exploitation, and employment sabotage. Women's conceptualization of economic abuse was found to be not inclusive and restricted to only certain abusive treatments. The negative consequences of economic abuse were observed in various aspects of women's lives, particularly women's psychological well-being. One way of coping with economic abuse that stood out was women's justification of men's economically abusive behaviour. The results implicated that economic abuse cannot be considered without the effects of the culture and the social norms. We discussed the findings regarding the differences and similarities among the economic experiences of employed and unemployed women.