Meseret Haileyesus

Meseret highlights a prevalent yet widely unrecognized aspect of domestic violence: economic abuse. By harnessing insights, she equips social service providers, financial institutions, and regulatory bodies with the understanding, data, and tools to identify economic abuse and build systems that protect survivors and support their recovery.

Economic abuse is a unique form of domestic violence, which includes behaviors that control a survivor’s ability to acquire, use, and maintain resources or improve their economic status - leading to their inability to make free choices and access safety. More than just limiting access to money and credit, financial abuse can include coerced personal debt, restricting a partner’s access to essential primary resources like food, shelter, clothing, medicine, utilities, and transport, and denying their ability to work or study.

Meseret has found that this is a crucial barrier for victims of intimate partner violence from leaving their perpetrators and is not recognized in specific interventions. Partners suffer from economic abuse long after physically going through a violent relationship.

Canadian Centre for Women’s Empowerment (CCFWE) has convened a National Task Force for Women’s Economic Justice, which is composed of representatives from women’s community organizations, financial institutions (such as major Canadian banks), utilities and other essential service providers, telecommunications companies, industry regulators and ombudsman services, local and national government, the criminal justice system, the family justice system, consumer law, and research and academic institutions. This task force is creating a coordinated federal response to the issue, and its whole-system approach is a first in Canada.

In collaboration with various organizations, Meseret is developing multiple programs and designing various tools to identify and respond to economic abuse. She carefully positions survivors as experts with lived experience and empowers them through financial literacy. Her organization conducts targeted research to fill the extensive gap in data on Economic Abuse and influence policy making. She uses this research to work with service providers, financial institutions, and regulatory bodies to train their frontline staff, advocate for the development of new codes of conduct for financial institutions, and design digital tools, mobile app products and services geared specifically to protect and support survivors.

Meseret has already seen traction for her interventions, having successfully advocated for the inclusion of Economic Abuse in the National Action Plan to End Gender-based Violence in Canada. She has engaged across municipalities in Canada, resulting in 54 major cities proclaiming November 26th as Economic Abuse and Injustice Awareness Day. CCFWE’s National Awareness Campaign to end economic abuse has reached more than 23,000 women across Canada and 151 organizations have pledged to fight against economic inequity and injustice. Meseret’s efforts to increase awareness on Nov 26th expanded to five countries: UK, Australia, New Zealand, Israel, and South Africa.

These are all first steps in her goal to build a layered social support system, where social services, government, financial institutions, and credit bureaus start offering nuanced support and recovery opportunities to economic abuse survivors in Canada.

In Canada, 95% of the women who experience domestic violence are also likely to experience economic abuse. More extensive than financial abuse, economic abuse can include limiting access to education and economic resources as well as employment sabotage. It includes cutting back on utilities such as heating and food and denying the victim other essentials such as medicine and child support. This form of violence is a critical barrier preventing victims to access economic resources. Victims struggle to regain an independent and dignified life.

Although economic abuse is understood as coercive control, it has not yet been criminalized. The perpetrator can maintain contact and control through spousal or child support and other financial activities. Coerced debt and poor credit scores often prevent victims from securing housing or accessing credit cards, student loans, and car loans. Additionally, constantly repaying accumulated debt can lead to further economic hardship, placing a woman at increased risk of returning to an abusive relationship to “survive.”

The reach and impact of economic abuse transcend socio-economic backgrounds. Financial abuse can disproportionately affect women who face increased vulnerabilities. This includes Indigenous women, young women, racialized women, immigrant/newcomer women and women living with disabilities, However, the level of affluence does not protect survivors as much as anticipated. In 2016, a study by Sagesse in Alberta pointed out how affluent victims not only face equivalent risk in calling out abuse but may not have a fallback in terms of eligibility for social services and support. The victim has no access to financial resources but since she has money “on paper,” she is not eligible for low- or no-cost services.

Across the board, systems designed around patriarchal gender norms continue to fail women in abusive environments. Meseret has found that the practices and systems enabling economic abuse are reinforced by certain social norms and prejudices. For example, people commonly assume that the male partner is the primary breadwinner in a relationship and may consider economically abusive behaviors as normal because of gendered roles and norms related to the management of money and family relationships. The taboo surrounding discussion of financial and family issues with those outside the household makes it difficult to recognize or address the extent of economic abuse in a relationship.

The lack of general awareness about economic violence allows perpetrators to continue harming their victims through their access to financial, social, and other essential services. Financial institutions, social service providers, and governments are unable to identify instances of economic abuse and to design systems and services that actively protect victims and support survivors’ recovery. For example, frontline workers in these institutions (such as bank tellers, managers, and customer service representatives) may fail to understand the privacy needs of survivors and mistakenly provide sensitive information about survivors to their abusive partners. Many survivors cannot open bank accounts because they no longer have a permanent residence. Social service providers such as shelters can provide essentials such as food and safe accommodations but are not equipped to support the unique needs of economic abuse survivors.

Meseret’s approach is centered on the lived experience of victims and evidence-based practice. She first began conversing with other women experiencing similar forms of violence. She gathered initial data and stories and started an assessment of the needs, critical policy gaps, and challenges that survivors were facing. Recognizing the severe lack of knowledge, policy, and data on economic abuse, Meseret set up an Expert Group in 2018 with women who had lived experience of this type of abuse. She worked with this expert group to surface insights, carefully collect data, offer confidential peer support and advocate for system change.

Seeing the complex and multi-layered nature of economic abuse, Meseret established the National Task Force for Women’s Economic Justice. It meets quarterly and offers expertise to design CCFWE’s interventions focused on Prevention, Support, and Recovery.

In 2020, in partnership with the Task Force and federal government, Meseret’s organization conducted the first-ever Canadian study on the impacts of economic abuse. The research found that, during the pandemic, more than 93% of victims and survivors of economic abuse reported an increase of controlling, manipulative, and coercive behaviors from their abuser. Armed with this initial data and the Expert Group’s lived experienced, Meseret has designed and delivered a series of workshops for frontline workers and victims – at shelters, banks, and government institutions – to help them recognize economic abuse and support survivors, whether they are still in the relationship or have already left.

As of 2021, CCFWE has already delivered 23 training sessions and mental health support in collaboration with Miss Canada 2020 to 51 women’s shelters across Canada.

In 2022, Meseret adapted the content of these training sessions for digital application. This includes victim-driven digital tools that will allow women to prepare a financial safety plan and help them rebuild their lives once they have left. From the prior community consultation, Meseret learned that economic opportunity and financial literacy are the most critical factor for women's economic security. This is why she is exploring how these tools and platforms could be run by survivors of financial abuse as an opportunity to recover while regenerating wealth and capacity in their lives. CCFWE is developing a digital platform (mobile app) that can be used by service providers to identify economic abuse and reform systemic barriers that exist within their institutions.

In 2022, CCFWE completed a ground-breaking national research project entitled "Understanding the Nature of Economic Abuse: A National Study on Service Provider Insights." This report, which was the first of its kind in Canada, shed light on the accessibility, barriers, and prevalence of economic abuse support services across the nation. Financial institutions, victim-survivors, and social service agencies comprised the three areas of inquiry. This study, which received funding from Women and Gender Equity Canada, was an essential resource for expanding an understanding of economic abuse in Canada.

To further support frontline service providers, lawyers and financial institution employees, Meseret and CCFWE are developing and implementing the first Canadian Economic Abuse Screening Tool (EAST). They are doing so in consultation with over 25 shelters, 100+ private family law attorneys and legal aid organisations across five provinces on their intake processes, current knowledge, and available resources on economic abuse. The toolkit aims to equip shelter staff with the necessary knowledge and resources to support economic abuse survivors in their financial empowerment. More information on the toolkit is available here: https://ccfwe.org/economic-abuse-screening-tool/.

Since perpetrators of abuse commonly use joint accounts and the banking system to control their partners, Meseret recognized that providers of everyday financial products such as banks, insurance companies, and building societies have an unrivaled ability to reach and support victims. However, most major Canadian banks are unfamiliar with economic abuse and lack the policies and procedures to help victims and survivors to escape an economically abusive situation and rebuild their lives. Meseret saw the opportunity to engage financial institutions since there had been the precedent of Canadian banks customizing their services and processes to protect senior citizens from coercion. By leveraging the task force as well as Australian best practice, Meseret has engaged the Canadian Bankers Association and the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada (FCAC). They are embarking on a pilot in 2022 with three banks to train frontline staff on economic abuse. At the same time, Meseret is working with the banks to create a Code of Conduct to set standards around how bank employees engage with survivors across the country. She has also set a precedent with credit score companies, who in partnership with CCFWE, repaired the credit scores of 51 survivors in 2021, enabling abuse survivors to regain control of their financial assets.

To shift systems so that they both prevent and actively confront economic abuse, Meseret knows that she must engage regulatory bodies and push for the creation of policy frameworks. She is engaging with federal and local governments to advocate for and create awareness of the scope of the problem.

CCFWE developed the first State of Economic Abuse report, with three policy recommendations to address systemic barriers, including criminalizing economic abuse. As a result of her advocacy, economic abuse was included in the inaugural National Action Plan (NAP) to End Gender-Based Violence in Canada in 2021. This report also informed policy recommendations CCFWE submitted to the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada, which has since included economic abuse in its national strategy. In March 2022, Meseret spoke at the House of Commons’ Standing Committee on the Status of Women and was a visitor to Parliament. In her address and speaking on behalf of CCFWE and survivors, Meseret encouraged the federal government to collect aggregated data and develop an inclusive policy to protect women. Meseret was also invited to contribute to the Committee’s study on intimate partner violence in Canada. In her statement, Meseret highlighted findings from CCFWE's recent study on the nature and prevalence of economic abuse in the Canadian context.

Additionally, CCFWE submitted an Economic Abuse Issue Brief with recommendations for the federal government and financial institutions to address the systemic obstacles that economic abuse survivors face at the present time. These recommendations were picked up in the Standing Committee’s final report, tabled on June 17th, 2022. The report, “Towards a Violence-Free Canada: Addressing and Eliminating Intimate Partner and Family Violence”, recommends the government develop a comprehensive strategy to address financial and economic abuse as a way to prevent intimate partner violence.

In November that year, Meseret was invited to address the Parliamentary Black Caucus at the House of Commons on the importance of CCFWE's work in raising awareness about Economic Justice and amplifying the voices and priorities of Black Canadians. During the presentation, Meseret emphasized the elevated risk racialized women face in falling victim to this form of abuse due to the intersectional barriers they encounter. CCFWE responded by submitting recommendations for the Canadian budget for 2023 to raise awareness of economic abuse and its effects on Black intimate partner violence survivors. These recommendations included a focus on collecting disaggregated data to understand victims' intersectional experiences better.

Also in November, CCFWE made history by hosting its landmark summit on domestic economic abuse and injustice. The virtual gathering brought together renowned experts and practitioners from across the globe to undertake a thorough examination of economic abuse policies and practices worldwide. With a focus on the Canadian landscape, the summit featured insightful presentations and engaging discussions that delved into the complexities of addressing economic abuse and the opportunities to drive change. The meeting aimed to raise awareness and create impactful solutions by collaborating with financial institutions, governments, social services, and the housing and telecommunications sectors to bring about systemic change and support survivors and marginalized communities.

Meanwhile, Meseret is engaging with public communications to build general awareness and knowledge of economic abuse. Through direct outreach, CCFWE has reached over 23,000 women with awareness campaigns. She strategically engages public figures such as Miss Canada to be high profile ambassadors for this advocacy. In collaboration with local government administrations, she established November 26th as Economic Abuse Awareness Day in 31 major cities in Canada, coinciding with the National Domestic Violence Awareness Month and Financial Literacy Month. As one of the few leaders engaging globally to address this issue, Meseret and peers in the UK, Australia, Israel, South Africa and New Zealand helped rally for the establishment of November 26th as International Economic Abuse Awareness Day.

As Meseret continues to integrate these approaches to address women's well-being, she hopes to build a streamlined system that prioritizes survivor safety, punishes coercive control, and ensures survivor dignity in the economic trauma recovery process. Her whole-system approach creates the environment for all players to understand and recognize their role in perpetuating this abuse and offers them clear pathways to shift behaviors.

Meseret grew up in Ethiopia and began her career as a midwife, serving rural communities there in her early twenties. She experienced for the first time the impact of poverty on maternal health outcomes. She came across myths about family planning, sexual health, and the stigma pregnant women face due to rape and violence.

Meseret worked on public health programs, particularly Women's Child Health and reproductive health and economic rights. She had the profound pleasure of assisting many marginalized African women through the unexpected pregnancy, childbirth, and new motherhood journey. She was also an ambassador for World Pulse and Meaningful Business, a global organization dedicated to addressing racial and economic injustice to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals. These experiences and her lifelong commitment to gender equality and women’s health and well-being led Meseret to found Maternity Today. This international non-profit organization strengthens women's and child health through superior advocacy, research, and education.

Her passion for health equity has led her to spend over 17 years working with various national and international non-profit organizations on dozens of projects centered on HIV/AIDS prevention, public health research, economic equity, mental health, and health policy to take action to advance social justice initiatives.

Beyond her social justice and public health involvement, Meseret advocated with the David Suzuki Foundation for promoting non-toxic green personal care products for a “biodegradable plastic-waste free planet” and zero-waste packaging. As a health and wellness industry entrepreneur, she is also a program advisor at Algonquin College’s Esthetician and Spa program. She is the strategist behind various digital platforms that connect innovators and ultimately provide solutions for socio-economic challenges exacerbated by COVID-19 and beyond. Over her career, Meseret has received several prestigious awards and fellowships.

She is a proud mother of one beautiful daughter who inspires and motivates her every day to continue her work towards a more just, fair, and inclusive society that protects and advances the well-being of women and girls.