Project profile

Enhancing women's Voice to Stop Sexual Harassment (STOP)

 

Sexual harassment[1] is a global issue. It knows no borders. It is a human rights violation that is rooted in unequal power and gender relations and disproportionately affects women and girls. Businesses and government have a clear interest in ensuring violence-free workplaces.

 

The project, Enhancing Women’s Voice to Stop Sexual Harassment, is working in four countries in the Mekong to address sexual harassment in the garment industry. The project will develop, test and adapt workplace models for the prevention of and response to sexual harassment in Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam.

 

The project is funded by the Australian Government through the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade(DFAT), Gender Action Platform and Australian NGO Cooperation Program. 

 

The project draws on CARE’s success in Cambodia in developing a workplace package for garment factories. CARE’s package includes a workplace sexual harassment policy; implementation guide for factories and a comprehensive multi-media training for factories to deliver to staff to prevent and report sexual harassment. The package was developed in consultation with government, industry and garment workers. CARE will continue to work in partnership with factories in Cambodia to implement and test the package.

 

CARE’s approach in Cambodia is being replicated in Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam, working with unions, industry, NGOs and government to identify, test and roll out appropriate models. Models and packages will be designed to respond to the legal and gender issues in each context and will be tested with stakeholders including garment workers.

 

Female garment workers are key stakeholders in ensuring the project is effective. CARE is actively engaging female garment workers in the development of models, mechanisms, training and monitoring and evaluation. CARE will support women to elevate their voices in debates and policy surrounding sexual harassment.

 

The project will strengthen the evidence-base on the effectiveness of workplace interventions to tackle sexual harassment in factory settings.  Evidence and research from the project will inform national advocacy efforts in relation to legislative reform and regulation in each country.

Through its regional approach, the project will also support CARE International in global campaigns such as that surrounding the proposed ILO Convention to eliminate Workplace Gender-Based Violence. The project will work in collaboration with CARE International’s Dignified Work Strategy team and related Global Advocacy efforts by CARE.

 

The regional approach also enables CARE to develop evidence and share learning internally and externally on what works in preventing responding to sexual harassment. Through this project CARE is leading development of contextualised models to support industry, government, and civil society actors in preventing and responding to sexual harassment.

 

Objective

• The long-term project goal is that women workers in garment factories experience safer workplaces, due to a reduction in sexual harassment.

• The end of project outcome is that garment factories implement effective and appropriate models to address sexual harassment in the workplace.

 

Key activities

The project will work through three core approaches to achieve its aims:

• Supporting garment factories to develop effective workplace mechanisms to respond to sexual harassment

• Supporting female garment factory workers to feel safe to report sexual harassment, and through engaging with garment factories, to do so free from negative consequences

• Strengthening the national regulatory environment of factories to promote laws, policies and mechanisms to address sexual harrassment in the workplace

 

        STOP report reviews what steps employers should take to reduce sexual harassment. 

        Read the report summary here>

 

[1] Sexual harassment is any unwanted or uninvited behaviour of a sexual nature that can make a person feel humiliated, intimidated or offended. In international law it is included as one form of gender-based violence. Gender-based violence is any act that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life (Article 1, Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women, A/RES/48/104)