'Who Pays in the End?': The Personal and Political Implications of Financial Abuse of Women in Intimate Partner Relationships
The pre-conditions under which financial abuse of women occurs and persists are examined by employing first hand narratives to illustrate the severity and the invisibility of such abuse. The costs of this abuse to women and children are also explored and recommendations are made for policy solutions to redress the problem.
From domestic violence to sustainable employment
International research has found that domestic violence is a significant barrier to accessing 
and sustaining work (Lloyd and Taluc 1999, 385; Browne et al. 1999, 398). 
In the Australian context, the Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research reports that 
between 6 and 9 per cent of Australian women aged 18 and over are physically assaulted each 
year and that more than half of all women in Australia experience sexual or physical violence 
across their adult lifetime. Such behaviour has been estimated to cost $8.1 billion, of which 
$4.4 billion is estimated to be borne by the victims themselves, $1.2 billion by the general 
community and smaller amounts by friends and family and various levels of government 
(Access Economics 2004). This assessment underestimates the costs of domestic violence in 
terms of the inability of those who have experienced domestic violence to move into and 
secure sustainable employment options. 
Despite these statistics there is a dearth of Australian research focussing on the link 
between domestic violence and its impact on long-term sustainable employment for those 
who have been subjected to such violence. 
This paper explores the issue of domestic violence and access to work opportunities. 
In so doing, it links the work of Gianakos (1999) and her Career Development theory with 
that of Bandura‘s (1989) Social Cognitive Career Theory to develop a framework which 
would provide a pathway to enable those who have suffered domestic violence to achieve 
sustainable employment and economic independence.
The evaluation of sexual harassment litigants: reducing discrepancies in the diagnosis of posttraumatic stress disorder.
Relatively few targets of sexual harassment cope with the psychological sequelae of their experiences by engaging in litigation. Those who do are often subjected to forensic examination to evaluate their history of psychological distress or disorder and to determine whether such a condition could be reasonably attributed to the alleged harassment, as opposed to some other cause. An unbiased approach to such examinations is critical to all parties, as well as to the profession itself. This study investigates the relationship between the clinical and restructured clinical scales of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2, the Trauma Symptom Inventory subscales, the Crime-Related Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (CR-PTSD) scale, and an American Psychiatric Association diagnosis (APA, Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders; DSM-IV-TR; 4th ed., text rev., 2000, Washington, DC, Author) of PTSD in a sample of sexual harassment plaintiffs. All measures performed well independently, but together provided improved predictive accuracy, suggesting that the use of multiple validated measures as well as structured diagnostic interviews may help us better understand litigants' experiences and reduce bias in evaluations.