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	Economic effect trails in wake of social impact, says leading NUI Galway authority</p>
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	Governments that cut back on supports such as rape crisis counselling during times of economic crisis are &ldquo;shooting themselves in the foot&rdquo;, a global expert on women&rsquo;s studies has said.</p>
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	Violence against women and girls has a social and economic impact, according to NUI Galway global women&rsquo;s studies centre director Dr Nata Duvvury, who is leading a new international research project charged with calculating the cost.<br />
	Dr Duvvury, a feminist economist, led a previous international study on the cost of domestic violence against women in Vietnam, where the estimated loss of productivity, out-of-pocket expenditures and forgone income for households represented about 3.19 per cent of gross domestic product.</p>
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	Studies in Chile, Nicaragua and Vietnam had also showed that the earnings of women who experienced violence were lower than those who didn&rsquo;t, by about 35 per cent.</p>
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	Although focusing on three developing countries &ndash; Ghana, Pakistan and South Sudan &ndash; the findings will have implications for all countries, including Ireland, where cuts associated with austerity hit support services for victims of violence, she said.</p>
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	Participants<br />
	London-based Ipsos and the International Centre for Research on Women in Washington DC are participants with NUIG on the &euro;2 million, three-year research, which will involve interviewing more than 4,500 women in three developing countries.</p>
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	The immediate impacts of those who experience violence are missing work &ndash; paid and unpaid &ndash; along with poor physical and mental health, poor reproductive outcomes, out-of-pocket expenditures for accessing services, and replacement costs for lost property, the project team said.</p>
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	It also has long-term impacts on education, expanding skills, experience and upward mobility within the workforce, chronic disability and morbidity, and stability of family life.</p>
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	It results in &ldquo;low community cohesion, loss of economic output for businesses and expenditures incurred by national and local non-governmental organisations&rdquo;, the team said.</p>
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	Lower economic output<br />
	Governments incur costs in both providing services to survivors &ndash; and, to varying degrees, perpetrators &ndash; of violence, investing in programmes to prevent violence, and loss of taxes due to lower income for households and lower economic output for businesses, Dr Duvurry said.</p>
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	&ldquo;Violence in society further pulls down an economy&rsquo;s capacity to recover from crisis, or affects the impact on promoting economic development,&rdquo;she said.<br />
	&ldquo;We want to demonstrate that the cost is not just to the individual, but that it has a ripple effect on men, the family and community also.&rdquo;</p>
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	The social accounting matrix used could analyse similar data across both developed and developing countries, she said, and would &ldquo;break new ground&rdquo;, she said.</p>
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	The project is part of the British government&rsquo;s department for international development&rsquo;s investment of &pound;25 million over five years.</p>
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	<a href="http://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/expert-warns-on-cutbacks-to-crisis-supports-for-women-1.2098934">http://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/expert-warns-on-cutbacks-to-crisis-supports-for-women-1.2098934</a></p>
