The Hidden Cost of Gender-Based Violence

*This article was originally published on Apolitical.

In her recent article in Foreign Policy, the American journalist Rikha Sharma Rani sheds light on a new trend in board rooms around the world. As she writes ”Big investors are starting to use a new metric to assess financial risk: rates of gender-based violence (GBV)”.

And rightly so. As she points out, the cost of GBV can be up to 3.7% of the GDP for some countries.

The World Health Organisation estimates that 1 in 3 women will experience either gender-based or sexual violence in their lifetime. The majority of this violence occurs before the age of 26, which means that approximately one-third of the female workforce are survivors of violence. Understanding this puts sexual harassment in the workplace in a different light.

Knowing this, we are tempted to ask why so few businesses factor GBV into their calculations of financial risk? After all, wouldn’t this reduce sick days? Or staff turnover? Isn’t it likely that caring for the emotional health of their employees could boost productivity, which they would be able to see on their bottom line?

The impact of violence

As the UN also recognises, gender-based and sexual violence is a global epidemic, with both short-term and long-term costs. GBV has been associated with significantly lower academic achievements, as well as higher absentee rates, more sick days and poorer health of employees in the workforce. GBV should no longer be treated as a given, a problem with no solution.

In general, governments are good at solving problems. Take for example the number of women in STEM fields, which has historically been low. Significant resources have been invested into teacher preparation, curriculum, supportive facilities and ways to encourage girls and their parents to join programs to solve the issue and we are seeing an uptick in numbers.

teaching girls to advocate for themselves, to know their rights and boundaries, to set them and to protect them, and to have the physical skills to defend themselves is not only life-changing and healing, it works to prevent violence in the majority of cases

When we try to measure if these programs are effective we naturally rely on data from previous projects. Therefore the evaluation methods will influence both current and continued investment. This prompts several questions: What are we measuring? Are we only measuring participation? Or are we also measuring whether women actually enter the STEM field? And, if it is only the number of girls who go into STEM, we might not be getting the answers we’re looking for. We also need to be asking how many stay all the way to graduation? How many get good positions in good companies? And if they leave their field, why?

What if I told you that, without mitigating the GBV risk, investors in educational programmes would lose up to 30% of their investment? Not a very attractive investment now, is it? Of course, this is not just an argument for better business, it is an argument to invest in bettering the lives of women and girls.

Due to the deleterious effect of GBV on the lives of girls, no matter how innovative another economic empowerment program might be — in STEM and every other field — success will be undermined by potential future GBV or sexual trauma.

Empowered self-defense

We must begin to view gender-based violence as a preventable health issue and do our best to “inoculate” girls against it. The best known evidence-based method of reducing sexual assault and GBV is training in Empowerment Self-Defense (ESD). ESD is a holistic approach to personal safety which teaches tools to combat the whole spectrum of violence, from verbal harassment to physical violence, which has been developed by women for women and other vulnerable populations over the last 40+ years.

What could business look like if we adopted clear and enforceable policies for zero-tolerance for GBV, sexual harassment, racism, shaming, bullying and all of the behaviors that create toxic work environments?

Systems of violence are complex, so a solution requires more than just physical techniques. ESD is a holistic approach to personal safety which teaches skills to combat the whole spectrum of violence, from verbal harassment to physical violence. It teaches individuals how to interrupt violence by listening to their intuition, assessing their options, asserting boundaries and using de-escalation strategies.

It provides tools for a range of mental, verbal and physical responses.

What we know is that teaching girls to advocate for themselves, to know their rights and boundaries, to set them and to protect them, and to have the physical skills to defend themselves is not only life-changing and healing, it works to prevent violence in the majority of cases. When you think about it, all of these skills are simply good life and business skills.

Imagining a future free from violence

Studies report that most attacks can be averted using ESD skills, and, even when an assault cannot be avoided, survivors who have been previously trained in ESD recover faster and are more likely to report perpetrators.

Investing early in ESD education and skills will dramatically lower the rates of violence. Bringing violence-prevention education into schools can “inoculate” children against sexual assault, reducing the number of survivors and lowering the statistics.

Making ESD training an integral part of an organisation’s work ethic can mitigate absenteeism and reduce health problems. Providing these trainings for the families of their employees widens the circle of prevention advocacy.

What could business look like if we adopted clear and enforceable policies for zero-tolerance for GBV, sexual harassment, racism, shaming, bullying and all of the behaviors that create toxic work environments? And how would that be affected by offering professional primary prevention trainings for employees and their families?

Part of implementing better business practices is looking at how we treat stakeholders. What better way to show clearly that their physical and emotional safety is of utmost importance to us in the c-suite?