To expand a bit more on how these three levels look in practices, I have some examples:
Social norms level: Social and gender norms impact a range of individual and workplace behaviors, ranging from a woman’s perceived and actual safety to leave the house and commute to work, whether she has control over the money she earns, whether and how women are heard, respected, and promoted at work, and the type, severity, and response to GBVH in the workplace. Several GBVH interventions in garment factories aim to shift the knowledge and attitudes of individuals to change their behaviors, but the social norms that influence GBVH are often not fully understood. An individual’s behaviors and actions are heavily influenced by what they believe others typically do and what they believe others think they should do. These norms can be internalized by individuals, but many will still conform to norms even if they don’t believe or agree with them due to expectations of social approval or disapproval. RISE supports progress, not just for the individual worker, but for women workers collectively, and thus recognizes the importance of addressing restrictive gender norms as they manifest within the workplace and are impacted by what happens outside the workplace.
Industry level : what do brands/international buyers and locals need to transform/change to create enabling environments where women workers can work in a safe environment? To give you a very concrete example, RISE is currently conducting a study to explore purchasing practices of the global garment industry, emphasizing their significant implications for workers’ rights, particularly in the context of GBVH within supply chains, with a focus on India. The preliminary results of the study will be shared during a side session that RISE will organize at the 2024 OECD Garment & Footwear Sector Forum. we are exploring the possibility of engaging in dialogue with a group of brands, suppliers, unions local workers’ organizations, and NGOs to discuss and identify which purchasing practices have a direct impact in cases of gender-based violence and harassment in factories, we know that short term terms in purchasing practices, and overall poor commercial terms are correlated to violence because supervisors use any sort of mechanisms to ensure workers comply with irrational targets; unfortunately in places where gendered social norms are the rule, one of those mechanisms is harassment and sexual harassment.
Policy level: Increased attention is being given to GBVH across the garment industry, following cases of violence against women workers in India, and the Dindigul Agreement. A greater understanding of GBVH is needed as it becomes part of occupational health and safety frameworks (OHS), human rights due diligence, and growing regulation in Europe. national and international legislation needs to be an ally of women workers, guaranteeing that they are protected under soft and hard law. The new EU regulation will demand companies to disclose data and most importantly to put together remediation plans for cases of GBVH if identified as a material issue. In India, the POSH Act requires companies to have a clear protocol and policy on addressing sexual harassment. The ILO Convention 190 gives a clear roadmap to governments and businesses on how to prevent, address, and remediate violence and harassment in the world of work.
Creating a safe avenue and mechanism for reporting abuse is vital. It must never be career limiting or fear inducing to report harassment or abuse of any kind.
In terms of ‘the how’ we outlined a framework with 5 main steps. In our toolkit we also have a detailed ‘Diagnostic’ that BSR developed to help guide companies – see pp 46
PREVENT violence and harassment by identifying potential risks
COMMIT to gender equality and diversity across the workplace
PROTECT employees with supportive policies and procedures
COLLABORATE AND CAMPAIGN beyond the immediate workplace
I am posting this on behalf of the wonderful Melissa Morbeck from NOMORE - who is trying to get online and will be with us shortly!!
Businesses reflect so much of society – with all types of people with all types of skills and life events that happen. When a person comes to work it is not a hand that comes to work but the whole person – and at the end of the day, no matter the business, it is the people who make up the values and spirit of the company – and ultimately help make it successful
Just like mental health support, businesses can and must play a vital role in support for employees, volunteers and contractors who are affected by domestic and sexual violence. There are safeguarding issues and risk to business, let alone to the person themselves that must be considered, along with reputational risk.
The best way to address gbv prevention is to be open and honest – and be prepared to support those who may and will come forward.
Businesses do this by having lunch and learns, awareness programs, campaigns and policies to support employees – whether a person may be a person who experiences abuse or uses abusive behaviour.
They can connect with businesses in their sector – associations – and HR societies to ensure they are meeting possible needs of those affected
They must ensure HR, D&I or Health and Wellbeing are trained to be first responders with a referral pathway in place - it is not the job of the employer to be the counsellor or the expert – there are wonderful direct service organisations who do that, such as Refuge or SafeLives that do that in the UK
We also have the NO MORE Global Directory - https://nomoredirectory.org/ - which has over 200 nations with listings of direct service as well best practice.
Thanks for this. For me there is a key point in there: “staff must be safe to raise this”. I would love to hear more about how you can ensure exactly that. Unfortunately, too often in my experience those who raise concerns risk “paying the price”.
Education of employees is key. Victim centredness means teaching people what constitutes abuse, that it is the victim of abuse or harassment that determines whether abuse has taken place.
Question2: I would like to start answering this question by saying that for many years the strategy from business (and is still the case) has been to approach GBVH from a “zero tolerance” perspective. Although, this approach was well-intentioned what we have seen as a result, and as a very unfortunate unintended consequence is the denial to speak openly about the situation or to hide the problem leading to underreporting of cases, and as such leaving survivors unattended and workplaces with weak mechanisms and tools to prevent, address and remediate. From a supply chain perspective brands’ zero-tolerance approaches to GBVH can be counterproductive if, inadvertently, they incentivize suppliers to hide occurrences of GBVH instead of taking steps to address it. At RISE we are advocating moving from a “zero tolerance” to a “zero tolerance to inaction approach”.
Examples – I have always thought the Diageo/CARE example in Cambodia very interesting – and shows what can be done even in probably one of the most challenging industry’s when it comes to VAWG. … I would love to know what has happened to it….
Here is some of the case study that’s in the toolkit:
The global alcohol industry engages Beer Promoters, Brand Ambassadors, Bar Teams, Hosts and Activation Specialists, whose primary role is to promote brands, provide samples, and serve or sell drinks.
Diageo recognised that Cambodia was a high-risk market where women beer promoters were particularly at risk of violence and harassment by customers. Their response to this high risk turned into one of their most successful interventions. Diageo partnered with CARE and took a holistic approach to tackle the issue. Using CARE’s gender transformative framework which looks at individual skills, community relationships and policy environments. The programme:
Enhanced the agency of the beer sellers themselves by helping to establish and support the Solidarity Association of Beer Sellers Cambodia (SABC) to deliver rights-based training, awareness of sexual harassment and the protection and support available - to workers through a peer-to-peer model. 2**. Looked at the power relations** – and worked with outlet owners themselves to understand the challenges their workers face, raise awareness among workers and contribute to creating safe spaces. 3. Engaged with the structures or underlying policies and worked with the Ministry of Women’s Affairs to strengthen the prevention of harassment at work laws so that they included entertainment workers 4. Cross sector/supplier engagement: The CARE/Diageo partnership helped establish Beer Selling Industries Cambodia (BISC) – an industry association for major breweries operating in Cambodia including Asia Pacific Breweries, Cambodia Brewery Ltd, Cambrew Ltd, Carlsberg A/S, Guinness and Heineken International. The BISC code of conduct has aims to improve the health, safety and working conditions of beer promoters by setting industry standards. All members agree to adhere to seven minimum standards relating to the health, safety and working conditions of the women promoting their beer including for example, transport home to be provided to workers after 10pm. These were revised in 2018 to include information on grievance mechanisms encouraging staff to report any incidents via the Diageo SpeakUp reporting line.
CARE’s work in the Mekong worked with garment factories on this issue. Its really sensitive culturally as well as for the business in its reputation with customers who are some of the global garment brands we all know.
The most successful work we saw was where a workplace put all the lessons from our review of evidence of what works, which we had translated into four languages (www.care.org.au/stop)
Factory managers who updated their policy, worked alongside workers and management to roll it out, undertake training, and investigated complaints with a survivor focused lens were definitely the most successful. Higher rates of confidence to report and higher understanding of appropriate behaviour.
Addressing social norms was critical. We worked with industry to make training videos that addressed social norms, culture and language (in Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam) so that when workers watched the training videos they could see versions of themselves on screen. This was definitely more effective. I’m sure we’ve all been to a training where a 1980s office worker that we can’t relate to is on the screen – we know that doesn’t work.
Raising awareness is critical to the success of this – that the workplaces had a policy and giving information on how to access the mechanisms.
Patience is critical, trust takes time to build with workers that there is a system in place and that its effective.
Working with SOBA, then DFID funded private sector development programme in Sierra Leone we gathered some experience addressing GBV with an SME. Lion Mountain, a small rice producer in Sierra Leone, had staff experiencing intimate partner violence and learnt it risked damaging this small local businesses reputation in the community and took a lot of staff time—time that could not be spent on “core business”.
In close collaboration with the company we put a few low-cost prevention and mitigation initiatives in place. With staff consent male partners were invited to staff inductions to better understand the job. We also worked with a local organisation providing professional counselling service. As a result, Lion Mountain was able to retain high-performing women sales staff. Management also reported less time spent on employees’ “private” matters, allowing them to focus on business growth.
If anyone is interested, a short blog about the case study:
HI Alice - Thanks for this example. It would be interesting to see statistics on the impact of this initative such as the uptake/usage of the hotline, if perceptions of what is acceptable and not acceptable changed, changes in behaviour, etc. One of the challenges for companies is having the capacity to prevent and manage GBVH in an ethical and sensitive way, as well as establishing accessible and safe reporting mechanisms and referral pathways. I am working on this topic with my clients and always looking out for good positive examples.
Completely agree. We recently did a survey on this and were very surprised at how many businesses do not acknowledge GBVH as a salient risk in the supply chain. What is not visible is not acknowledged!
I would also point people to look at Vodafone’s domestic violence policy - they along with a handful of other companies now provide paid leave for survivors of violence. Some of these policies are very impressive and it will be interesting to see how they are implemented and reported on.