The Scarlet Letter | Season 3 | Episode 4 | Maddy Ulbrick

Turns out “what’s mine is yours” hits differently when economic abuse is in the mix. In this episode, you'll hear from Maddy Ulbrick, a doctoral candidate in Monash's Art Faculty. Her PhD A Man's Home is a Castle and Mine is a Cage: Pathways to Remedy for Economic Abuse in Victoria tackles the murky world of money, power, and control in relationships. Maddy lifts the lid on why the legal system needs a serious feminist makeover, how financial control keeps women trapped, and what happens when you mix policy research with personal fire.

First published 2017.

The Scarlet Letter podcast is produced by the Feminist Legal Studies Group. This podcast features interviews with feminists connected to the law, discussing their life, work, and feminist perspectives. It's perfect for anyone passionate about feminist legal scholarship.

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Transcript | The Scarlet Letter | Season 3 | Episode 4 | Maddy Ulbrick

Tamara Wilkinson: [00:00:00] Good morning, I'm Tamara Wilkinson and welcome to this episode of The Scarlet Letter, the monthly podcast of the Feminist Legal Studies Group at Monash University's Faculty of Law. Today I'm joined by Maddy Ulbrich, who's a doctoral candidate in the Arts Faculty here at Monash, as well as a research assistant and teaching associate.

The title of Maddy's thesis is A Man's Home is a Castle and Mine is a Cage, Pathways to Remedy for Economic Abuse in Victoria. Her research looks at economic abuse, which is a form of family violence that commonly occurs alongside other forms of violence, including physical, sexual, and psychological.

Maddy, thank you so much for joining me today. Your thesis topic is so important. Can you tell me a little bit about how you decided you wanted to research further in this area?

Maddy Ulbrick: Yeah growing up with family violence and with a father who had acute mental illness with psychosis, services to deal with these really complex needs were non existent.

There was no [00:01:00] help, and And the system was really so broken. So I was particularly attuned to these issues. And then looking into it more deeply, it became clear that the law really lacks the subtlety and nuance to deal with family violence. And there is little space for economic abuse to be addressed, so it remains this hidden issue.

And the response to economic abuse is inadequate, and that was something that I felt really strongly about. Especially because the consequences the economic consequences for women are so dire I felt that there really needs to be accessible remedies that allow women to recover from this form of family violence.

So on a personal level, I thought doing this topic would be empowering, but I also hoped that I'd be able to contribute in some small way to improving practices for women who experience family violence and particularly economic abuse.

Tamara Wilkinson: Yeah. Did it make it Did it make it difficult for [00:02:00] you having that personal experience or I guess it would make you certainly more empathetic to?

Maddy Ulbrick: Yeah I think certainly of the stories were similar to experiences that my family went through, but there was that solidarity as well in knowing that. It's so common and so many women and families go through it.

So yeah, it was difficult but I think it would be difficult hearing these stories regardless.

Tamara Wilkinson: Yeah, absolutely. So I understand that your thesis involved quite a lot of empirical research. So you interviewed judicial officers, lawyers. Other service providers and survivors of economic abuse. Can you tell me a bit about what that process was like and what some of the challenges you faced were?

Maddy Ulbrick: Yeah. That was an incredible process and I'm in, I'm sorry, I'm eternally indebted to the practitioners and especially the magistrates and judges who gave generously of their time either early in the morning or on their lunch break despite [00:03:00] their crushing workloads. So the insights that they shared with me were just the most invaluable to my research and the survivors as well who bear their most vulnerable experiences with me as well as their wealth of wisdom. I suppose wrangling the huge amount of data was a key challenge that I faced. I interviewed a lot of people and I look back and think, was time of no immense value to you?

Probably could have interviewed less people, but at the same time I Ended up with a really rich sort of narrative of what this problem is and how far reaching it is. I think the biggest challenge I faced was the fact that in doing a PhD, I'm sure this is something that you've faced as well.

It's all consuming, and so you have to pursue it with a single minded zeal. And that's difficult, irrespective of the topic. But when you're dealing with something as sensitive and traumatic as family violence, it's compounded. I was really haunted by [00:04:00] the content. of my research, which often involved really graphic accounts of violence, and that was difficult.

There was also a real sense of responsibility, and not only to do justice to the survivors stories, but also to find a way to try and improve the situation, and so that was a heavy burden. In saying that, I guess what tempers the veritable nightmare that is family violence was the women's strength in the face of it all.

And their stories really were a gift of resilience.

Tamara Wilkinson: Yeah. Yeah. That's really amazing. I can imagine it would be a really emotional experience.

Maddy Ulbrick: Yeah. So it was quite exhausting.

Tamara Wilkinson: Yeah. Yeah. So your work takes an explicitly feminist focus, which I love. What is it about the feminist lens that appealed to you when you were formulating your research question?

Maddy Ulbrick: I don't think it would have been possible to do this research without a feminist lens. I think I would have come up wanting. But I [00:05:00] think feminism and feminist consciousness is something that I reflect on quite a lot. And really, it provides a robust and systemic way of understanding how these issues affect women.

And I'm really drawing from the feminist canon in this research. So I'm using the feminist legal theories of Graycar and Morgan. And all of those amazing researchers, but primarily the feminist lens I'm using is Jacqui True's Feminist Political Economy Method. And I guess what appealed to me about this particular approach is that it argues that there is a relationship between women's poor access to productive resources, such as land, property, income, employment, technology, credit, and education.

And their likelihood of experiencing gender based violence. And The most crucial element of Jacqui True's method is that it recognises that denial of [00:06:00] material security corresponds with denial of physical security. So often when we think about economic abuse, we separate it out from the other forms of family violence and tends to be minimised.

And my research found that that can have really dangerous consequences. So economic abuse needs to be considered a risk factor for serious and ongoing violence and that feminist lens helps to a pin that argument,

Tamara Wilkinson: Yeah. Yeah. That's really that's really interesting. I hadn't really thought of it that way as like the economic abuse being like a risk factor.

That's really interesting.

Maddy Ulbrick: Yeah. And it isn't necessarily considered a risk factor. So when women are You know, going through the intervention order process, it often doesn't come up on the interim orders, and I suppose with less specialized lawyers and less specialized magistrates, they're not looking for it either or asking those questions, and so it gets missed, and we know that [00:07:00] it's what traps women in unsafe relationships, so I suppose my view is that it should be coming out on those orders.

Tamara Wilkinson: Yeah. More often. That makes a lot of sense, doesn't it, is if you're in a violent relationship and you literally don't have the money or the resources to leave, you're trapped.

Maddy Ulbrick: Yeah. And so many of the survivors I spoke to, I think all of them had endured periods of homelessness and often with children and living in their cars and that's just one aspect of why.

We need to be looking at it as a risk factor.

Tamara Wilkinson: Yeah. That's so distressing. Yeah.

Maddy Ulbrick: Really dangerous to be living in your car during winter months. And

Tamara Wilkinson: yeah. Gosh. So I believe that in addition to all the work you do here at Monash, you're also involved with the women's legal service, Victoria. Can you tell me a little bit about the work that you do there?

Maddy Ulbrick: Yeah. So I've been fortunate enough to be a volunteer there [00:08:00] over three years and It is an incredible environment at Women's Legal Service. All of the staff there work tirelessly. I think words really are inadequate to capture how brilliant they are, and they've all got really great senses of humour as well.

I will stop being so effusive, because it'll make it awkward the next time I'm in there. But I suppose What I'd like to say as well about having that opportunity is when I first started as a volunteer, I had the absolute privilege of doing some work with Emma Smallwood when she was working at Women's Legal.

So I was shadowing her in the duty lawyer list at the magistrate's court and we'd often have conversations. And she also wrote the report Stepping Stones, which was on economic abuse. She is an intellectual giant and the most generous person, and so she really influenced my work. And, yeah, I just feel really grateful to Women's Legal Service.

They often will [00:09:00] take the time to answer some of my questions. And, yeah it's amazing being there. Yeah. So do you work with Clients there? No. So I'm not a lawyer. I do some research support work there in the sort of economic abuse space, but yeah, predominantly I've been a volunteer there over the past three years.

Tamara Wilkinson: So it really tailors with your PhD research? Yeah, certainly. Yeah, that's great. Do you have any plans for where you'd like the future to take you when you finish your doctoral research, which I understand is quite soon? Imminent. Yeah.

Maddy Ulbrick: Big question. I suppose I'd like to continue working in the legal and policy space but I don't I think if I'm going to dream big, I'd like to be half as effortlessly competent as Louise Taylor, who was recently appointed the first Aboriginal magistrate in the ACT.

I hero worship her. For good reason. Yeah. I also became unhealthily obsessed with the Royal Commission into Misconduct in the [00:10:00] banking and financial services industry. And Like the rest of the country, I was blown away by the skill and brilliance of Rowena Orr.

Tamara Wilkinson: Oh, yeah.

Maddy Ulbrick: If the opportunity to become involved in the research side of a Royal Commission ever arose, I would eagerly embrace the challenge.

That would be amazing. Clearly, I'm not lacking in feminist heroes.

Tamara Wilkinson: Yeah. Yeah. That's very true. There's a lot of inspiring women out there. Yeah. For sure. So as a non lawyer dealing like so much with the law and dealing with a topic that's really legal, has that been challenging or difficult?

Not really. Yes.

Maddy Ulbrick: Yes, it has. I think I have often had to go and spend days, if not weeks, in the Law Library going and looking through textbooks, trying to understand, what are these equitable principles and what do they mean and reading through the first judgment was like in 1939. And so trying to [00:11:00] understand the legal jargon of that era and what it means now is But fortunately, there are, some very brilliant feminist legal researchers who have written on these topics and distilled some of those issues.

Tamara Wilkinson: Even for law students, those concepts can be challenging. And I don't think anyone would ever say that the law was designed to be accessible.

Maddy Ulbrick: Yeah. I think what really fascinated me in doing this research was looking at how the law wasn't designed with women in mind and what the implications of that have been.

And I read this great article and I think the title was teaching the law as if women existed. And I love that. Yeah, I love that. So that's I've been running with that probably for the second half of my PhD, looking at, these equitable principles and how they invisiblize women's experiences of violence.

And they focus on this idea that women are emotionally dependent on men or that they have an [00:12:00] emotional attachment to financial resources rather than, what the reality is when women are signing these contracts. Yeah.

Tamara Wilkinson: Yeah. So just one final question if you can bear to talk about your PhD some more is how to phrase this.

What are some of the What are some of the conclusions that you've come to in your research? Do you have like ideas for future reform to the law or things like that?

Maddy Ulbrick: Yes. So I think the main one at the moment is increasing understanding of what economic abuse is and its risks.

Definitely in, in the intervention order space, I'd like to have that built in a little bit more and The specialist family violence magistrates as well are saying the same thing that, lawyers need to be putting it to the courts more and asking for those specific conditions. So I'd like to see that.

And then property matters as well. I think economic abuse needs to come in to [00:13:00] the frame much more than it is now. And likewise with The specific legal principles around addressing family violence, like the Kennon Principle that is, currently there's a really high bar, evidentiary bar to reaching that, and also it's not something that's negotiated, and as we know, most of these matters are dealt with outside of the court system.

So it's, it is hard currently to have family violence addressed, and even harder to have the economic abuse addressed. side of it addressed, but I know that the ALRC family family law act review has currently been released. So it'll be interesting to see what happens there because I know that they've got some recommendations around how that can be improved.

Tamara Wilkinson: So it's really about like raising the awareness of economic abuse and then like almost educating the legal sector to, To take it into account.

Maddy Ulbrick: Yeah, and then looking at as well at how [00:14:00] women can potentially be compensated maybe through, the property law system or how economic abuse can be addressed in a way that's tangible rather than just being featured on an intervention order.

Like it has to go somewhere that's going to be meaningful for women. Yeah, and help them recover and Move on with their lives.

Tamara Wilkinson: Yeah. Maddy, thank you so much for joining me today to talk about your research. It's been a real pleasure hearing about the important work that you do, and I wish you the best of luck for finishing your PhD.

I wish I was where you are.

Maddy Ulbrick: Trust me, time flies. So you will be there before you know it. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me and best of luck with your PhD as well.

Tamara Wilkinson: Thanks. And thank you all for listening to this episode of The Scarlet Letter. You can catch us again next month on iTunes or on our blog, which is found at feministlegalstudies.

wordpress. com. And don't forget to subscribe to the Scarlet Letter to make sure you never miss an [00:15:00] episode.