Intimate partner violence and abuse (IPVA) is a global problem. Despite its prevalence, few studies have investigated the employment impact of IPVA, with existing studies spread across multiple disciplines including criminology, economics, and public health. Investigating the employment impacts of IPVA are crucial for understanding the consequences to victim-survivors and wider society.

This systematic review, Employment consequences of Intimate Partner Violence and Abuse, conducted by VISION researcher Dr Niels Blom and Flavia Andrea Lamarre, provides an overview of the main findings on the topic and identified research gaps and opportunities for future research.

Niels and Flavia identified studies via Embase, APA PsycInfo, PubMed, Social Sciences Citation Index, and two related reviews. The studies concerned the association between IPVA and absenteeism, time off from work, unemployment, and/or job loss and were peer-reviewed, English-language, quantitative studies. 

Overall, the 48 identified studies indicated a clear relationship between IPVA and absenteeism/time off work, but evidence was more mixed regarding the association between IPVA and job loss or unemployment. The limitations of current research were discussed, which included that the far majority of studies concerned the United States, investigated only victimization among women, and few used nationally representative data. Male victim-survivors, differences by ethnicity or socioeconomic class, perpetration, and how employment circumstances may help or hinder victim-survivors’ labor market involvement had received limited attention in the literature.

Filling these gaps would provide a stronger evidence-base for effective policies, enabling victim-survivors to retain their employment.

Recommendations

1. Managers and colleagues should have access to training and assistance in aiding victim-survivors where appropriate, potentially with mandatory training for managers and HR staff.
2. The large majority of studies stemmed from the United States, which makes it less evident whether the found associations also apply to other societal contexts. Cross-national or cross-state research could help.
3. For a topic where employment is the central aspect, there has been remarkably little attention to employment circumstances and employers’ role. Further research is needed to examine variation across these aspects to understand what enables victim-survivors to retain employment and long-term productivity. 
4. A minority of the studies included men. Future work could explore what explains gender differences in the employment impact of IPVA, and when they are more pronounced. Differences by race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, and age have received limited attention, warranting further research.
5. There has been a limited amount of work on IPVA perpetrators and their employment. Further work in this area is important.