Thank you so much. I think that's why we are asking to have a national day. Having a national day would really help us to raise awareness.
What we have seen, sadly, is that our victims don't even know if they are experiencing economic and financial abuse because finance is taboo, especially in racialized cultures. Domestic abuse is also taboo. There is power and control, so as a tactic, abusers usually use that power to isolate and control them. That's why we have also mentioned having a national day.
Victims don't have a good understanding and even service providers sometimes don't, according to our statistics. It's very tricky.
This is a huge opportunity for abusers to perpetuate and to control others financially. However, once the victim moves out, they experience the impact of economic and financial abuse. Plus, as you know, the system is not designed to protect victims. Again, that's another form of systemic violence for racialized victims.
I think that in terms of legal proceedings, awareness is the most important thing to teach women. When we teach, we need to make sure that it is inclusive. It should be trauma-informed and culturally sensitive because talking about the economy and talking about finance is a very sensitive matter, which relates to trauma. That's why my organization right now has a trauma-informed approach to empower women because it's very triggering even to speak about that.
The other thing is that we need to conduct more research on coercive control. That would be a very good segue to mitigate the impact of financial and even economic abuse.