10 Introduction Some Facts in the Case 11 A low labour-force participation rate certainly does not mean given credit at all consist mainly of women.This includes people that large numbers of women do no work.What it means is that dependent on welfare payments and those with no current cash their work is not paid.They work mainly outside the cash economy, income.The difficulties this situation creates for women in getting in housework,childrearing,subsistence agriculture,or labour for finance to buy a house are familiar in the experience of women's a husband or father who markets the product. refuges. This is one aspect of an economic segregation between women and men that also runs through the money economy.In Australia, for instance,men hold 86 per cent of the jobs as administrators, Violence,Prejudice,the State executives and managers,but only 28 per cent of clerical jobs;88 per cent of jobs in trades,process work,labouring and mining The lack of alternative housing is one of the reasons women may and 47 per cent of jobs in sales (1983 figures).A study by stay in,or return to,a violent marriage.Domestic violence is a the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development very large part of all violence.It is difficult to get reliable statistics, (OECD),covering the richer capitalist countries,shows that this but a good many pointers exist.A study of four police stations in pattern is international:"The coefficient of female representation different suburbs of Sydney in 1977-8 showed that calls to shows that women are most under-represented in administrative domestic assaults exceeded calls to other assaults-in some areas and managerial occupations in all countries...Women are over- by a factor of three.(The notorious reluctance of police to intervene represented in clerical occupations in all countries ..They are in domestic violence has some basis in the risk to the police also over-represented in service occupations in all countries.'When themselves:in the United States about 20 per cent of police deaths the broad groupings are broken down,as the OECD study also in the course of duty occur in such cases:)A widely quoted study notes,the degree of concentration can be even more striking:For in Scotland found that 25 per cent of violent crimes reported to example,in the United States in 1978,97 per cent of registered the police were assaults against wives and girlfriends.A national nurses and 94 per cent of elementary teachers within this group sample survey in the United States in the mid-1970s reported were women,while 91 per cent of industrial engineers and 99 per that 28 per cent of couples acknowledged at least one violent cent of airplane pilots were men.' incident and estimated that the true figure was closer to 50 or 60 One reason why women rarely appear near the top of the per cent.In a recent phone-in in Victoria 22 per cent of women economic tree is that in a capitalist economy the ability to had experienced domestic violence but did not report it.While accumulate wealth is very much dependent on one's ability to violence by women against men is far from negligible,the majority command credit.There is reason to think that lenders -banks of serious domestic assaults are by men against women. and other financial institutions -do not extend the credit to This is part of a larger pattern of violence against women.Rapes women that they do to men.The New South Wales (NSW)Anti- reported to the police in Australia rose from around 600 a year Discrimination Board,currently studying this issue,cites cases in 1972-3 to over 1,200 in 1981-2.In the United States the such as this in the early 1980s:'A married couple...had a joint figure rose from 47,000 in 1972 to 79,000 in 1983.There is cheque account with the same suburban bank.They separated reason to think that these figures are still very much understated and then took out individual accounts with the same bank.They and that most rapes are not reported to the police.An alternative both overdrew.The man's cheques were honoured though he approach is to conduct a survey of the general population asking overdrew by $1500.The woman's cheques were bounced although people if they have been victims of various crimes.One such she overdrew by only $300.' survey,done on a very large scale by the Australian Bureau of Direct discrimination in terms of sex,marital status and the Statistics in 1983,estimated 26,700 sexual assaults on adult assumption that a husband is necessarily 'head of the household' women during a year,including 8,600 rapes or attempted rapes. and therefore a wife is not an independent agent,is compounded (Attacks on teenagers would have to be added to this figure.)This by the fact that several categories of people who are usually not gives a rate of five sexual assaults for every 1,000 adult women