Understanding economic abuse through an intersectional lens: Financial abuse, control and exploitation of South Asian women’s productive and reproductive labours

Existing literature on financial abuse focuses on men’s control over money, goods, assets and over women’s education/work, thereby implicitly constructing economic activity as paid work. This paper responds to this under-recognition of men’s (and in the context of particular communities, their family’s) abuse of and control over women’s unpaid (domestic) labour within a broader conceptualization of economic abuse. Drawing upon life-history interviews with 41 South Asian women from two separate studies in the UK and India, this paper takes an intersectional perspective to explore how gender, migration status, race/ethnicity and class can help understand women’s experiences as a continuum of economic abuse