16 Days of Activism: Essential resources from the Business Fights Poverty resident gender expert

By Alice Allan, Business Fights Poverty

Friday November 26 2021

This year 16 Days of Activism against Gender-based Violence kicked off on 25 November, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, and runs until 10 December, Human Rights Day. We invited our resident Gender Expert, Alice Allan to share her top resources on how businesses can take the lead in tackling gender-based violence in the workplace.

The United Nations is marking the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-based Violence under the global theme “Orange the World: End Violence against Women Now!”

The 16 days kicks off on 25 November, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, and runs until 10 December, Human Rights Day.

We invited our resident Gender Expert, Alice Allan to share her top resources on how businesses can take the lead in tackling gender-based violence in the workplace, we’ll be sharing them for you here, over the next #16days.

COVID has exacerbated gender inequality and #GBV. This article explores why building back more resilient supply chains is crucial for business

As we mark this year’s 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence, measures to tackle COVID-19 continue to exacerbate gender inequality worldwide. If we truly want to build back fairer, then businesses, civil society and governments must put women’s rights squarely at the centre of post-pandemic recovery plans, says the Fairtrade Foundation’s Alice Lucas.

Read the Article

Engaging male allies for gender equality is key to reducing #GBV.

Engaging men as allies can be a powerful accelerator to help companies, governments and institutions achieve gender equality. Elizabeth Nyamayaro takes us behind the scenes of how UN Women built a worldwide network of men who are championing SDG 5 – the gender equality goal.

Read the article.

Introducing the worlds first chatbot, ‘Sophia’ to tackle domestic violence

Domestic violence is the hidden plague and it is getting worse. The impact of this violence is far reaching and can have serious consequences for both individuals and businesses alike. To combat this issue, Kona Connect has developed “Sophia”, the world’s first chatbot designed to empower domestic violence survivors globally.

Read the article

What can business do to tackle GBV A seminar with Claudia Eger, Copenhagen Business School

In this seminar video, Claudia Eger the Assistant Professor at the Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy at Copenhagen Business School., discusses the interaction between gender and violence, how GBV is manifested in business contexts such as in the workplace and supply chains, and what companies can do to help tackle GBV.

GBV and tourism – women occupy large numbers of jobs in the hospitality sector worldwide, putting them at particular risk…

Violence against women, in all its forms, is about the abuse of power as an expression of entitlement that underpins patriarchy. A new book Tourism and Gender-based Violence: Challenging Inequalities draws attention to the ways in which tourism may perpetuate gender inequality in its most exaggerated form.

Read the article

On this last day of 16 Days of Action, we are sharing our toolkit of how companies can tackle GBV. It includes a 5 point plan:

1 Prevent,

2 Commit

3 Protect

4 Collaborate

5 Be accountable

Read how Unilever developed an effective complaints mechanism to tackle #GBV in its Kenyan tea plantations (case study p32 of the toolkit)

How a partnership between CARE and Diageo sought sector wide changes to protect Cambodian beer sellers (case study p36 of toolkit)

The productivity costs of violence and harassment to the Cambodian garment industry are estimated to be $89million per annum. Read how CARE are tackling this challenge with factories across SE Asia (case study p26 of toolkit).

Download the toolkit