Claudia Segre: “Women, let’s free ourselves from economic violence”

They have made important journeys and the great international WomenXImpact summit is an opportunity to talk about them, to understand what were the key moments that made them the great professionals of today and what were the most difficult obstacles to overcome. They are women who have managed to stand out in their life and career paths and, more often than not, have been careful not to isolate themselves in positions of power, on the contrary creating networks and synergies, in the name of a change of paradigm, who wants women to be more active, more present, more collaborative and aware.

Among them there is Claudia Segre, member of the Equal Opportunities Commission ofAccademia dei Lincei as well as president and founder of Global Thinking Foundation, the foundation that since 2016 has been committed to supporting initiatives that have financial literacy as their goal, in an ongoing battle against economic violence.

In Italy we are far behind on financial literacy: we are the last in the OECD compared to other countries for economic skills: what can be done practically?
“Our foundation deals precisely with this, with a very specific imprint: Italy has a strong skills differential and we need to create a new literacy model, aiming at the Global Goals of the United Nations 2030 Agenda and referring to Istanbul Convention which, within domestic violence, included economic violence. The National Council of Economy and Labor has released data that 3 out of 10 women do not have a current account and do not manage their earnings, 34% declare that the partner is not transparent about their salary and the contribution to family expenses of women is maximum, it exceeds 80% of their availabilities. We must accompany women towards a change of mentality: women must work on their own financial awareness and autonomy. In three years, more than 5,000 women have participated in our project Women squared, which accompanies girls to undertake training courses and professional careers in STEM sectors, so that they develop greater economic-financial skills ».

You mentioned economic violence, less known than other forms of violence, because it is more subtle: can you tell us what it is exactly?
«In our exhibition Free to live we really wanted to make economic violence visible in a digital art gallery, trying to help visualize its effects, with images of chains and isolation. Yes, of course, it is invisible, there are no bruises, but it still hurts. Isn’t it violence if your husband drains your bank account because he is ludopathic? Isn’t it violence if it makes your checking account disappear just before you split up? If a woman is controlled in all her expenses, if she does not have a signature on the family account, if she does not know how her salary money is invested, that’s violence. Then we come to situations of dispossession and economic abuse: the wife is asked to act as a figurehead, she is forced to sign sureties and mortgages are loaded on her head. We try to teach women that their well-being also passes through income and the direct management of the resources that enter the home. We are committed to ensuring that children at school work on the civil constitution and recognize the importance of gender and wage equality. We have made a real manual on economic violence, so that we learn to recognize it and avoid it ».