HOME IS WHERE THE HURT IS: Examining Economic Dependence as a Driver of Intimate Partner Violence Against Poor Women in the Philippines

Abstract

In order to fully encapsulate the experiences of victims, we would recommend future scholars to study IPV to interview victims themselves, instead of relying on key informants and representatives of organizations, if their circumstances permit. While we learned so much from those that provide direct services to the victims themselves, we are aware that, as the primary stakeholders, victim-survivors have deep insights that will help examine the occurrence of abuse and how it interplays with economic dependence and other social forces. Putting their perspectives at the heart of such studies will be the most effective way to confront the problem of VAW. Since children are a significant factor in the decision-making process of victim-survivors, and are inevitably collateral and sometimes even direct victims of IPV, scholars could also look into the lived experiences of children in abusive households. As minors who are fully dependent on their parents, they are burdened with another layer of vulnerability that deepens the trauma and mental repercussions from the abuse. It helps to probe into their dynamics with their mothers who are IPV victims and how these play into their coping mechanisms to survive. We also recommend the evaluation of RA 9262–its implementation and the intricacies victims go through when relying on the said law. As this is an introductory paper on economic 75 dependence as a driver of IPV, we recommend a more detailed, more narrow analysis of the mutually reinstating character of women’s economic insecurity. Lastly, harking back to the words of Ms. Perez, it would substantiate the efforts of families, networks, and communities to save a victim. More than policies, law enforcers, and public servants, it takes a collective to protect sectors that are most vulnerable to violence, and that is why we recommend future researchers to examine how the people themselves take the matter of VAW into their own hands. Organized efforts of the masses against women-targeted abuse and the effectiveness of such would provide a lens as to the agency and power of people in mobilizing moments against oppressive structures that reinforce VAW.