UNITED STATES: Domestic Violence Grows As Workplace Issue

By Haider Rizvi Reprint | | Print |

Haider Rizvi

WASHINGTON, Jan 25 1997 (IPS) - Labour researchers here say that domestic violence is hurting women on the job.

Nearly one million women are abused, harassed, and beaten by their husbands, ex-husbands, boyfriends and ex-boyfriends every year, these researchers say, noting that despite tough laws, gender violence remains one of the most frequent, but least reported, crimes in the United States.

“It’s an epidemic which is profoundly affecting our communities and workplaces,” Ida Castro, director of the Women’s Division of the U.S. Department of Labour, says in a report.

“It is no longer a private, family dispute that affects only those directly involved,” contends Castro, who shares women’s advocacy groups’ concern that growing incidents of domestic violence are increasingly affecting women’s positions in the job market. “Violence against women is directly interfering with their ability to get, perform, or keep a job,” she says.

The new report, ‘Domestic violence: A Workplace Issue’, highlights the plight of working women who face domestic violence. It is the first documented recognition of the phenomenon of such violence as a workplace issue.

Labour researchers note that about 96 percent of working women who fail to perform their jobs suffer from domestic abuse or violence, adding that sometimes women workers even end up losing their jobs because their male abusers force them to stay homes.

Women advocacy groups say instead of firing victims of domestic violence, employers should take steps to help their workers.

Although 49 percent of corporate leaders acknowledge that domestic violence has a harmful effect on their companies’ productivity and health-care costs, only 12 percent of them understand that they need to take a major role in addressing the issue, say labour officials who cite a survey of Fortune 1,000 U.S. companies conducted in 1994.

Women’s groups are calling for corporate executives to sponsor programmes designed to create public awareness about domestic violence and to build new shelters for women workers who experience violence at home or in offices. They are also calling on employers to pay time off for family emergencies.

“In this country, we have 4,000 animal shelters but only 1,500 shelters for battered women,” says an activist of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, an umbrella group comprising a number women organisations. “Isn’t it sad?”

Labour researchers say that although at workplaces, many women are killed as a result of robbery or other crimes, it is alarming to note that at least one-fifth of them are attacked by their former or current husbands or boyfriends. According to a 1996 Labour Department statistical report, almost half the women workers killed belonged to socially and economically marginalised communities.

According to the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), a woman is beaten every 15 seconds by her partner and it happens at some time in 25-35 percent of U.S. homes. The FBI says 4, 000 women die from such abuse every year.

Researchers say that women continue to be more vulnerable than their male colleagues at work to attacks by people with whom they have been intimate. According to a survey conducted by the U.S. Department of Justice in 1994, compared to men, women experience over 10 times as many incidents of domestic violence.

Under increasing pressure from human rights groups, the Bill Clinton administration passed a new law to curb domestic violence in 1995. The law, known as the ‘Violence Against Women Act’, empowers legal authorities to take strict actions against offenders, but women’s rights advocates say its implementation is still far from effective.

“It’s true that they (the government) have taken some positive steps, but not to the level they should be,” says Linda Posouszny of the Centre for Women’s Global Leadership, a non-profit international women’s rights advocacy group. “They just make promises, but ours is a constant struggle. We will keep it going until we see a complete elimination of violence against women.”

The most regrettable aspect of the workplace violence is the role of the police, says Posouszny. Citing a U.S. Department of Justice study, she says that throughout the United States, the police are “more likely to respond within five minutes if an offender is a stranger than if an offender is known to the female victim.”

UNITED STATES: Domestic Violence Grows As Workplace Issue

By Haider Rizvi Reprint | | Print |

Haider Rizvi

WASHINGTON, Jan 24 1997 (IPS) - Labour researchers here say that domestic violence is hurting women on the job.
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