ABUSED AT WORK
Sexed in elevators
Chairperson of the Botswana Council of Non-Governmental Organizations (BOCONGO) Gender and Human Rights Sector, also focal person of the Southern Africa Partnership on the Prevention of Conflict (SAPPC), Chigedze Virginia Chinyepi says women in the working class are affected by Gender Based Violence (GBV).
When speaking at the South African Women in Dialogue conference held in South Africa this week, Chinyepi shared that when discussions around GBV are held, working women are often forgotten. She attributes this to the fact that most of them do not voice out their pain, as they are ashamed and wonder how the society will react to them speaking out.
Chinyepi said there is now a disturbing trend of online GBV where victims get cyber harassed, cyber bullied and hate speech thrown their way. And what is unfortunate is that in most countries, Botswana included, there are no proper reporting mechanisms and no systematic interventions except in a few cases. She shared with women of other 15 African countries that Botswana was topping lists when it comes to global rape statistics. Adding that one of the reasons advanced for the abuse is the women’s dependence on abusive men for food and other basic necessities. “In an effort to address this, women have to be capacitated with entrepreneurial skills so that they can be independent. There is also need to enforce existing laws to eliminate repeat offenders,” she said. Bosa Ledwaba of North West Province in Rustenburg and working closely with women in the mining sector said that young engineers are leaving the job not because they want to but because the work environment is not conducive.
She said the situation is so bad that women are not even safe in elevators, where they are often raped. “Their bosses are sleeping with them and if they report they lose their jobs, so they have to keep their jobs. Mining is also causing situations of migrant workers and housing is not properly worked out for people who are coming to stay with their families. They stay in hostels and some go home, take their teenage girls in the pretext that they are taking them to better schools, only to turn them into wives when they get to the hostels.
What is even sad is when the girls complain, they are told not to speak such things about their fathers because they are providers of the family. How do we encourge the girl child to go into engeenering when we do not protect them?” she said.