Economic Abuse, Caregiving, and Women’s Financial Rights

Riane Eisler, an Austrian-born American systems scientist, futurist, attorney, and human rights advocate, is renowned for her influential work on cultural transformation and gender equity. Best known for “The Chalice and the Blade,” she introduced the partnership versus dominator models of social organization. She has received many honours, including the Republic of Austria’s Cross of Honour for Science and Art, the Nuclear Peace Leadership Award, earlier awarded to the Dalai Lama, the Center for Compassion Humanitarian Award, the Humanist Pioneer Award, and induction into the California Hall of Fame. She is President of the Center for Partnership Systems and Editor-in-Chief of the Interdisciplinary Journal of Partnership Studies at the University of Minnesota. The three books of hers of note that could be highlighted are The Chalice and the Blade, now in its 57th U.S. printing with 30 foreign editions, The Real Wealth of Nations, and Nurturing Our Humanity: How Domination and Partnership Shape Our Brains, Lives, and Future (Oxford University Press, 2019). These contributions amount to a second series with Eisler.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen interviews Riane Eisler about women’s financial exclusion, economic abuse, unpaid caregiving, and domination economics. Eisler traces how coverture, discriminatory credit practices, and undervalued care work restricted women’s autonomy. She argues that family law and economic policy must recognize caregivers, pay benefits directly to individuals, and treat investment in people as human infrastructure. The discussion also addresses universal basic income, AI-driven job disruption, wealth concentration, LGBTQ+ exclusion, climate risk, and equitable social transformation.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Until fairly recently, women often faced serious barriers to opening bank accounts or obtaining credit independently. Could you connect that history to economic abuse and then to the larger structure of domination?

Riane Eisler: The economic exploitation of women is built into the domination system. To begin with, women’s work has historically been exploited. In the economic models of both Adam Smith and Karl Marx, as was customary in their times, the work of caring for people received little serious attention. Care work was coded as feminine and expected to be performed without pay by women in male-controlled households.

Under the common-law doctrine of coverture, married women historically lost much of their independent legal identity and control over property to their husbands. This gradually changed through married women’s property laws. Women could sometimes own or manage property before those reforms, depending on their marital status, jurisdiction, class, and family circumstances, but the system placed major legal and practical restrictions on their autonomy.

Women in the United States were not universally prohibited from holding bank accounts before the 1970s. However, banks could discriminate against them, and women often faced demands for a husband’s permission, signature, or male co-signer when seeking credit. The Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974 made discrimination in credit transactions on the basis of sex or marital status unlawful.

That does not mean there were no women who managed property, businesses, or finances. Some did. But they often had to manoeuvre within the system, use family connections, or conform to gender expectations. It was like navigating a minefield.

Gay men and lesbians faced another form of exclusion. Their relationships were outside the legally recognized norm and received little or no institutional protection.

We are not taught enough of this history. It should be part of our understanding of social and economic development. Women’s rights, children’s rights, and LGBTQ+ rights are all challenges to domination. If we had a clearer frame for understanding that, those of us seeking progress could work more effectively.

Speaking of economics, the gap between those who possess enormous wealth and the rest of the population continues to grow. We now speak not only of billionaires, but even of individuals whose estimated fortunes may approach or exceed a trillion dollars. That concentration of wealth is not historically new in principle. It represents a return to domination economics.

Whether the ruler was a Chinese emperor, an Arab sheikh, an Indian maharaja, or a European feudal lord, extreme economic hierarchy was built into the system.

Capitalism developed during a period when technologies of extraction, production, and expansion were advancing rapidly. I wrote an article about social shifts, technological phase changes, and technology that will be published in an academic collection.

Jacobsen: Does contemporary family law place enough value on caregiving?

Eisler: No.

Jacobsen: What would you do to “make it so,” to quote Jean-Luc Picard?

Eisler: That question requires us to examine the entire economic system. For a time, there was movement toward recognizing the value of caregiving. But under the Reagan administration in the United States, there was a major political shift toward deregulation, reduced social provision, and a more market-centred economic model. From my perspective, that marked a renewed movement toward domination.

Still, some progress continued. There is an enormous difference between an egalitarian prenuptial agreement and the conventional marital arrangements that preceded it.

I was instrumental in pioneering egalitarian prenuptial contracts. In fact, one appeared on the cover of a British magazine, which I still have somewhere. I was invited to Europe for the launch of that issue.

But it was a brief moment. I went on to work that was much broader than my work as a family-law attorney.

Jacobsen: From the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action through its five-year reviews, as well as many other international conventions and resolutions, two phrases frequently appear: “unpaid work” and the more formal “unremunerated labour.”

Eisler: That is right. Unpaid care work is increasingly recognized globally as an essential contribution to society. How can we change the way work is measured and valued so that caregiving is distributed more equitably and recognized as productive labour?

AI may force the issue. If artificial intelligence replaces or transforms a substantial number of jobs, as many predict, societies may need some form of guaranteed income or universal basic income to maintain people’s economic security.

But that income should not simply be paid to a household through a designated head of household. Historically, that has often meant giving the money to the man and assuming that he will distribute it equitably. Benefits should instead be paid directly to each eligible adult.

Research on cash-transfer programmes in countries including Brazil has found that directing benefits to women can improve spending on children’s food, health, and education. I once encountered a claim that one dollar placed in a woman’s hands produced benefits equivalent to many times that amount when given to a man. I do not recall the exact figure or study, so I would not rely on that number. But the broader evidence supports paying women directly rather than assuming that resources controlled by men will automatically be shared equitably.

That is not because men are inherently bad. Men can be socialized to regard their earnings as exclusively theirs and to feel entitled to spend them on themselves, including on gambling, alcohol, commercial sex, or other personal consumption. Women are more often socialized to direct resources toward children and household needs.

A guaranteed income should therefore go to every eligible adult and should recognize caregivers individually. In lower-income countries, children and adolescents sometimes perform substantial caregiving because a parent has died, become ill, migrated for work, or is overwhelmed by other responsibilities. Any policy would have to protect those young caregivers without normalizing child labour or placing adult responsibilities on children.

We should understand this spending as an investment in human infrastructure. Investments in physical infrastructure are often capitalized and accounted for across the useful life of the asset rather than treated only as an immediate expense. In the same way, public investment in caregiving, health, education, and income security should be recognized for its long-term social and economic returns.

Does that mean a guaranteed annual income should literally be amortized under existing accounting rules? Not necessarily. Human beings are not depreciating assets. But the larger point is that investment in people should not be dismissed as mere consumption or an avoidable cost.

Will that happen? I have no idea. If we undergo a severe political regression, the question may become moot. We could destroy one another quickly through war or more slowly through environmental breakdown.

Climate change is already increasing the frequency and intensity of dangerous heat in many regions. What people experience locally varies, but combinations of high temperature and humidity can be especially hazardous because they interfere with the body’s ability to cool itself.

Jacobsen: Thank you very much for the opportunity and your time, Riane.

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Scott Douglas Jacobsen is a Writer and Editor for The Good Men Project with more than 2,000 publications on the platform. He is the Founder and Publisher of In-Sight Publishing (ISBN: 978-1-0692343; 978-1-0673505) and Editor-in-Chief of In-Sight: Interviews (ISSN: 2369-6885). He writes for International Policy Digest (ISSN: 2332–9416), The Humanist (Print: ISSN, 0018-7399; Online: ISSN, 2163-3576), Basic Income Earth Network (UK Registered Charity 1177066), Humanist Perspectives (ISSN: 1719-6337), A Further Inquiry (SubStack), Vocal, Medium, The New Enlightenment Project, The Washington Outsider, rabble.ca, and other media. His bibliography index can be found via the Jacobsen Bank at In-Sight Publishing comprised of more than 10,000 articles, interviews, and republications, in more than 200 outlets. He has served in national and international leadership roles within humanist and media organizations, held several academic, media, and research institution fellowships, and currently serves on numerous international boards. He is a member in good standing in numerous media organizations, including the Canadian Association of Journalists, PEN Canada (CRA: 88916 2541 RR0001), and Reporters Without Borders (SIREN: 343 684 221/SIRET: 343 684 221 00041/EIN: 20-0708028), and others.