Intersectional Financial Wellbeing Project

The Intersectional Financial Wellbeing project explores the impacts that essential service providers (such as banks, utilities companies, telecommunications companies, health services and legal services) have on women, non-binary and gender-diverse people. Based on the findings, a set of resources will be developed that will guide essential service providers to embed intersectionality into their policies and practices, for the benefit of all community members.

Funded by the Ecstra Foundation.

 

About the project 

In 2021, WIRE was funded by ECSTRA to conduct research into the experiences of women and gender-diverse people when engaging with essential service providers. The project focused on women and gender-diverse people because of the systemic barriers that disproportionately affect them. Over 2 years, WIRE collected nearly a thousand stories from women of diverse backgrounds (based on sex, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, language, religion, class, socioeconomic status, gender identity, ability or age) via focus group discussions and a diary study. 

Focus on financial wellbeing 

Financial wellbeing in Australia is gendered. Women have more cultural and systemic barriers that impede financial wellbeing than men. In addition, the financial wellbeing of gender-diverse people is mostly overlooked by Australian research and data collection. Since WIRE commenced in 1984, we have seen the ongoing financial inequity faced by women and gender-diverse people in Australia’s financial systems, industrial relations system, welfare system, and cultural assumptions and norms, which result in poverty, homelessness and violence. 

WIRE has worked in the gendered financial wellbeing and capability space for decades. In that time, a lot has changed: we have moved from a feminist approach to an intersectional feminist approach, which names the multiple systems that create barriers to financial wellbeing and privileges different cohorts within Australia. 

Access to Essential Service Providers  

Essential services are education facilities, financial services, emergency services, utilities, Centrelink and other entities that everyone may need to interact with, either on a regular basis or not. In other words, we have no choice but to engage with them. Whether it is to enrol for a course, apply for a discount or service, open an account, or update personal details, many people must interact with essential services every day to gain access to a service we are all entitled to. Consequently, gaining insight into what will improve the experience of all customers, regardless of their characteristics or personal circumstances, can make a substantial difference to the quality and impact of service provision. 

Practice Guide for Promoting Inclusive Essential Service Provision 

We analysed the stories collected through this research for common themes and created a practice guide as an implementation support tool for essential service providers to draw on what we learnt. 

This Practice Guide has been produced primarily for front-line customer service staff, their team leaders and managers; and for staff who have a role in developing policy, processes and systems to support priority groups of customers who may experience difficulty in accessing and benefiting from their service. Staff in these roles might be considered ‘agents of change’ in shifting the essential service sector towards ever better practice and outcomes in inclusive service delivery, adding to their use of universal design and safety by design. At a broader level, better practice recognises how organisational systems need to change to better respond to the different needs and preferences of the organisation’s customer base. 

You can download a copy of the practice guide via the link below

WIRE Practice guide for essential service providers 2024

 

Essential Equitable Service Delivery With co-design 

The Intersectional Financial Wellbeing project was an example of how an intersectional lens and co-design can be applied to suit a particular context. This project was mainly focused on women who face more than one form of unequal treatment and discrimination in their lives which can result in compounded disadvantage. 

Drawing on its 40 year history of addressing structural issues contributing to gender inequity, WIRE applied intersectional and co-design principles to create a more inclusive and equitable experience for all participants in this study. 

We have gathered and published our learnings from this project along with recommendations on how to implement intersectional co-design principles to create equitable practices.

You can download a copy of the report via the link below. 

Essential Equitable Service Delivery with Co-design