Global Cost of Gender-Based Violence in the Workplace – Call for an ILO Convention on Gender-Based Violence at Work

International Trade Union Confederation

https://www.ituc-csi.org/IMG/pdf/stop_gender_based_violence_at_work_en_final-2.pdf

https://www.ituc-csi.org/gender-based-violence?lang=en

https://globalsolutions.org/blog/2015/11/Global-Cost-Gender-Based-Violence#.VkJnC62FPmK

Global Cost of Gender-Based Violence in the Workplace

When you think of gender-based violence, you may think of women abused in a refugee camp or conflict zone; you may think of a wife mistreated by her husband. However, gender-based violence seeps into all aspects of society, including the labor force—and it carries a high cost.

The McKinsey Global Institute recently published a report that found achieving equality in the workplace could result in a $12 trillion to $28 trillion increase to the global annual GDP by 2025. A large part of this inequality stems from the consequences of gender-based violence, such as lost labor force participants who are too intimidated or traumatized by violence to return to work.

Despite these high costs, the International Labour Organization (ILO) has yet to ratify a convention on gender-based violence in the workplace. Prior to the ILO’s Governing Board meeting in 2014, US Democrats called on the ILO to put gender-based violence on their agenda, stating that “an ILO Convention would help address the injustices for women in the garment industry and other industries and would be an important step to improve women’s working conditions worldwide.” Despite this push from government officials and unions, the ILO failed to address a convention in 2014 and 2015.

To fully understand why an ILO convention is necessary, it is important to remember that the victims of gender-based violence in the workplace encompass everyone from a girl groped by her supervisor in a Bangladesh garment factory to a marine sexually assaulted by his roommate. Gender-based violence encompasses child labor and human trafficking, and it is apparent in almost every industry around the world.

An ILO convention would legitimize the global gender-based violence problem and provide a framework for governments and civil society organizations to prosecute offenders. As the McKinsey report reveals, combatting gender-based violence is essential, not only to the victims of discrimination and violence, but to the global economy and workforce as a whole.