I am particularly worried for women garment workers : as demand for clothing drops and retailers are shutting down, millions of workers (mostly in Asia) are currently seeing their contracts being suspended or terminated with little or no compensation. The lack of income will likely exacerbate domestic violence -because of the tensions that arise with lockdown, and the financial pressures / financial dependency- and some women will also be forced to go back to their home villages, where they can face new types of abuse since they will be financially dependent. Support from NGOs might be non existent in the villages. NGOs that provide support to survivors are also struggling to keep afloat.
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great point @RaquelLagunas, at CARE we’ve also been conducting VSLA and community platform COVID-risk analysis and mitigation to understand the role that these forums can continue to play in supporting women in rural communities while preventing infection and protecting staff
Victoria, I agree. Has anybody come across anything that has asked: What would have been a feminist response to the virus?
A resource to help companies address some of the challenges of women’s rights in the supply chain is ActionAid’s “We Mean Business: protecting women’s rights in global supply chains” – it was written shortly before the coronavirus situation became global, but nevertheless contains some valuable lessons (I am biased because I’m an ActionAider, but it’s great!).
Some things for businesses to consider include:
Conduct gender-sensitive risk and impact assessments of Covid-19 on both operations and employee wellbeing. These should include meaningful consultations with potentially affected women, women’s organisations and women human rights defenders to identify and address any actual or potential adverse human rights impacts, including how corporate activities may inadvertently be exacerbating women’s exposure to violence, either through carrying out work, or through being at home.
The findings from this impact assessment should then of course be integrated in to all relevant processes, and businesses should take a range of gender responsive measures to prevent and mitigate these impacts
In line with the ILO Convention No. 190 on Violence and Harassment, businesses should assess the risk of sexual harassment and gender based violence in their supply chains, take appropriate steps commensurate with their degree of control to prevent it, clearly state to all business partners that harassment and violence at work are not allowed, and ensure their business partners develop a reporting and handling procedure and make it known to all workers.
Businesses should communicate adequate and easily accessible information to all staff, particularly those most likely to be affected, taking account of language and literacy levels. This should include information on available services if people are experiencing violence in the home. Think about signposting to national domestic violence helplines, police services, specialised services for women of colour, women with disabilities, men at risk of violence and men at risk of perpetrating violence themselves.
Talk to your internal women’s network – what support mechanisms do they have in place for women staff, and how can they be adapted (with adequate support) to the new realities?
When considering training for staff who may be facing different work environments, consider implementing online training on gender equality, which covers the human right to live free from violence, and gender training for both men and women, that challenges the widely held social norms that violence against women is acceptable and inevitable. Consider training, or signposting to organisations who work directly with me who are at risk of perpetrating violence (in the UK for instance, Respect is the main organisation working in this area: http://respect.uk.net/)
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this blog gives an idea Dean! https://medium.com/@leila_billing/what-does-feminist-leadership-look-like-in-a-pandemic-35b2ee0eb994
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https://www.unwomen.org/en/news/stories/2020/3/news-women-and-covid-19-governments-actions-by-ded-bhatia. This is about what govts can do broadly not just about VAW. companies can support for example by lobbying for keeping shelters designated as essential services.
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In some countries victims of intimate partner violence are encouraged to leave their homes without any punishment, and the government also provides shelters. Private business like hotels have offered their capacities to welcome and take care of victims of intimate partner violence.
Hi Jane, Chiara, all.
I am a lawyer currently based in Sri Lanka. I have two roles. One is that I head legal for the Ministry of Finance’s National Agency for Public Private Partnerships. Second is that I lead the Equality programme for a charity, iProbono. We are a network of lawyers that provide access to justice to vulnerable persons and communities. GBV is one of our main focuses both from Government and through my non-profit role.
Sri Lanka’s main export is apparel and tea - both employing around 90% women. Our main source of foreign exchange is exporting low skilled labour (mainly house maids) in anticipation of their remittances - this again is about 90% women. Most women working in these sectors are considered low-skilled and already experience high incidences of GBV.
COVID-19, as everyone has pointed out, has led to alarming increases of violence against women in their homes.
Working with a number of Sri Lankan businesses, they are poorly equipped to handle the rising GBV cases following the current lock downs. Most businesses never used to address it in the first place.
You mentioned policies which Vodafone has. Is there a way that we in the developing world, can have access to these policies?
And there are almost no women in the corona virus response teams in many countries !!! This is really worrying me !!!
Agree with you Lee it is an issue of power and control and we need to address this. Businesses also need to understand the consequences of unequal gender power relations. They have an important role to play in introducing workplace policies, procedures, safety planning, information and support for victims. A key issue is building TRUST with women workers, who may fear retaliation, loss of their jobs, etc.
One of the issues that companies often have difficulty with is how to work with perpetrators of DV who are employed by them. We are going to be writing a briefing on this issue soon. There’s lots of guidance documents for companies, employers, workers…on what they can do, how they can recognise and respond effectively.
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Human resources leaders and managers need to be briefed on violence against women, the risks and consequences as they exist during normal times and how the current situation is exacerbating it, while communicating expectations that managers will support any staff who come forward and disclose.
To address this:
• consider establishing a special contact person within human resources that can serve as a dedicated focal point to deal with domestic violence for staff.
• allow flexible working arrangements, so that women can prioritize the safety and well-being of their children; and allow ‘absences’ without penalization to allow survivors to access emergency shelter, support services or court proceedings.
• communicate zero-tolerance to employees with links to the available resources and (interim) measures in place.
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I have also seen a lot about moving perpetrators out of homes instead of victims and provide counseling services
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Are there any health related companies with us today - im concerned about the increase in violence and harassment against health workers during C-19 (70% of whom are women globally) what could or should we be doing to protect them better?
All this is great and it requires employees to have a certain level of trust with their company and that trust is something companies need to build.
CARE has conducted a Rapid Gender Analysis of the global COVID-19 outbreak. One of the key findings was that there is a huge lack of gender-disaggregated data. We know that health crises affect men and women differently but without understanding how and why, government, business and civil society are unable to tailor policies and response. A key step businesses can take is to understand that the crisis impacts women and men differently and to focus on gaining insights on GBV and gender risks within core operations. CARE’s Rapid Gender Analysis is a toolkit which can be adapted with support.
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Hi Aritha, really interesting to hear from you! Yes, the Vodafone Toolkit that I wrote has been disseminated across the world and has been used in all of their markets to support the global policy - including in India and other developing countries. I’ll post up the pdf in a moment. There are other companies that I’m working with on global policies that are applicable also in developing countries, which may be of interest to you.
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Would also add that support for refugee services should extend to BAME specialist services too and those that have the expertise to support on online violence elements of DV
Thank you Jane. That would be greatly appreciated for us. As a Government agency, we can also disseminate a version of that to our private partners, requesting them to adopt such policies.
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This is workplace violence and harassment so there should be policies that are clear in hospitals and hospitals need to be trained in this as well as systems for reporting and clear repercussions in place
Yes we would love to see this. So many of the communications businesses are being encouraged to do are around talking to victims/survivors, rather than engaging potential perpetrators