Why respect & protect
Respect and protect is an initiative of social enterprise Flequity Ventures. Our purpose is to disrupt financial abuse and gender bias through smarter product and service design.
Social entrepreneur Catherine Fitzpatrick first proposed financial abuse terms and conditions in her Designed to DisruptTM report published by the Centre for Women’s Economic Safety in 2022.
Respect and protect is a public awareness campaign that aims to encourage all businesses to make it clear that financial abuse is an unacceptable customer behaviour which may result in a warning, account suspension or closure.
Evidence shows that one of the essential actions to prevent gendered violence is to challenge the condoning of violence against women.1 Changing business contracts through including financial abuse in the terms and conditions makes it explicit – businesses won’t tolerate the misuse of their products to cause financial harm.
However, few customers read the fine print of their accounts. That’s why we’ve done it.
Respect and protect aims to trigger a public conversation about the weaponisation of products and services. The aim is to change perpetrator behaviour – not to close accounts. That’s why we’re calling on all businesses to play their part. And we’ll continue to showcase and congratulate the first movers of this internationally leading initiative.
“I believe in the power of collective action for positive change. If every business in Australia moved cautiously, consistently and collectively to protect victim-survivors, it would be a gamechanger.” – Catherine Fitzpatrick, Founder & Director, Flequity Ventures
1 Change the Story, Our Watch, 2021
