90 pc of women face gender violence at workplaces
Tuesday, 1 July 2008
More than 90 per cent of working women both in rural and urban areas have been experiencing various kinds of gender violence, including verbal, physical, mental and sexual, at their workplaces, reports BSS.
This was revealed by a study styled 'Gender Based Violence at the Workplace : Causes and Consequences' saying 92.3 per cent working women of urban areas and 88.3 percent of rural areas have been badly treated by various types of violence by their male counterparts.
The study was conducted recently among the urban and rural working women under the initiative of Social Science Research Council of the Planning Commission under Planning Ministry.
The study said huge number of adolescent girls and women are being sexually abused in their workplaces but it was the most hidden and underreported form of violence as there was a tendency to deny the incident.
Most of the women do not talk about it in order to protect herself/himself from shame and stigma as well as to protect the perpetrator who was usually a colleague or a supervisor, it said.
Twenty-three per cent of women spoke about the existence of verbal abuse and a major portion of 30 per cent had spoken about mental abuse, said the survey.
Some of the working women said they were bound to respond to indecent proposals by their immediate supervisors or male colleagues to keep their service uninterrupted.
Sometime women were trapped by immediate superiors when they worked at night and they were also sexually abused in transport, the study said. Only 13.3 per cent of women in the rural area and 12.3 per cent of women in the urban area told that their employers' behaviour was good, whereas one-third of the respondents opined that employers behaviour was bad.
More than 22 per cent of the working women identified few legal provisions as one of the main reasons for violence at the workplace in the urban area.
Almost 38 per cent of the working women of the study areas opined that patriarchal mentality was the root cause for occurring violence at the workplace.
The study suggested formulating a national plan of action for preventions of all forms of violence against women.
This was revealed by a study styled 'Gender Based Violence at the Workplace : Causes and Consequences' saying 92.3 per cent working women of urban areas and 88.3 percent of rural areas have been badly treated by various types of violence by their male counterparts.
The study was conducted recently among the urban and rural working women under the initiative of Social Science Research Council of the Planning Commission under Planning Ministry.
The study said huge number of adolescent girls and women are being sexually abused in their workplaces but it was the most hidden and underreported form of violence as there was a tendency to deny the incident.
Most of the women do not talk about it in order to protect herself/himself from shame and stigma as well as to protect the perpetrator who was usually a colleague or a supervisor, it said.
Twenty-three per cent of women spoke about the existence of verbal abuse and a major portion of 30 per cent had spoken about mental abuse, said the survey.
Some of the working women said they were bound to respond to indecent proposals by their immediate supervisors or male colleagues to keep their service uninterrupted.
Sometime women were trapped by immediate superiors when they worked at night and they were also sexually abused in transport, the study said. Only 13.3 per cent of women in the rural area and 12.3 per cent of women in the urban area told that their employers' behaviour was good, whereas one-third of the respondents opined that employers behaviour was bad.
More than 22 per cent of the working women identified few legal provisions as one of the main reasons for violence at the workplace in the urban area.
Almost 38 per cent of the working women of the study areas opined that patriarchal mentality was the root cause for occurring violence at the workplace.
The study suggested formulating a national plan of action for preventions of all forms of violence against women.