OPINION: Women most likely victims in workplace violence

Sexual assault, insults, humiliation, discrimination, and beyond that contradictory orders or isolation are becoming ‘natural’ aspects of work relationships. Even more so when we realize that many women are afraid to report their attackers, because of not knowing who to turn to or out of fear of losing their jobs. Even worse, some women have got used to it, believing that violence is inevitability, that it ‘is part of their jobs.’ Even though men can also suffer violence and harassment in the workplace, stereotyping and inequality in power relationships make women much more vulnerable to it. Social and gender-based discrimination, which are predominant in society, are reproduced and exacerbated by organisational culture – and tend to drive women or (ethnic, sexual) minorities into subordinate or even violent situations.

This hidden issue ends up having consequences for working women’s physical and psychological well-being, including leading to health problems. Women’s everyday working lives are characterised by anxiety, depression, panic attacks, sleep disorders, attention deficit and memory problems, and feeling vulnerable. This situation can lead to women leaving their jobs or giving up working, which results in interruptions in employment with consequences for current and future income (less right to pensions etc), adding to the already unacceptable gender pay gap of 23 per cent between women and men in the world. Again, inequality is higher in Africa as shown by the World Economic Forum in its latest Global Gender Gap report: in Angola for exemple, women earn less than half than men (40 per cent).

Even though workplace violence affects all sectors and all categories of workers, the health sector – where women make up the majority of workers – is the one that best illustrates the seriousness of the situation. The World Health Organization calculates that violence in this sector makes up a quarter of all assaults that take place in the workplace. In South Africa for example, 61.9 per cent of all health care workers experienced at least one incident of physical or psychological workplace over the past 12 months. When nurses are asked where this violence comes from, they point to patients and visitors on the one hand, and their colleagues and superiors on the other. In fact, work-related violence, and the steady increase thereof, is also due to external factors. It intensifies in situations of economic crisis and war. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, violence against nurses became a weapon of war. A 2012 study found that about 80.1 per cent of health care workers had experienced one or more types of workplace aggressions.

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OPINION: Women most likely victims in workplace violence

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