The Centre for Diversity Policy Research and Practice (CDPRP) of Oxford Brookes University is pleased to invite you to a hybrid event on Gender-based violence in the world of work, where Dr Viginta Ivaškaitė-Tamošiūnė and Dr Sofia Strid will present the findings of their latest research.

Gender-based violence in the world of work

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During the Covid-19 pandemic, bullying, harassment, violence, verbal abuse, verbal threats, or unwanted sexual attention remained part of many workers’ day-to-day life. The 2021 European Working Conditions Telephone Survey (EWCTS) data show that 12.5% of workers in the EU experienced some form of adverse social behaviour. The share of women experiencing adverse social behaviour at work was consistently higher than that of men. In her presentation, Viginta will look at adverse social behaviours by age groups, presence of customers, place of work, by country, and for specific sectors and occupations. Exposure to adverse social behaviour at work is also linked to negative health outcomes, as well as job demands and resources. Sofia will present the importance of a gender+ framework when analysing inequalities, based on findings from two European-funded projects: UniSAFE and RESISTIRÉ. She will demonstrate how gender-based violence is highly prevalent among staff and students across European research performing organisations, and how its increase is related to inequalities in other domains (e.g. work, economy). She will also discuss the organisational context of violence, based on UniSAFE’s research.

Keynote speakers

Dr Viginta Ivaškaitė-Tamošiūnė is a research officer in the Working Life unit at Eurofound, Ireland. She is involved in projects investigating working conditions in Europe based on the European Working Conditions Survey. More specifically, she focuses on paid and unpaid working time, well-being, gender segregation, adverse social behaviour at work, psychosocial risks, minimum wages. Before joining Eurofound in 2022, she worked as an economic analyst at the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission and carried out cross-country research to support fiscal policy development in the EU. She also worked as a researcher at the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE), the Lithuanian Social Research Centre and as a lecturer at Vilnius University. Her other research interests include income inequality, poverty, gender equality, as well as fiscal and social policy. Viginta holds an MA in Social Policy and a PhD in Social Sciences (Sociology) from Vilnius University. She was a visiting researcher at the University of Antwerp, Stockholm University and the University of Essex.

Dr Sofia Strid is Associate Professor in Gender Studies at Örebro University, and from April 2022 also holds a position as Senior Lecturer in Sociology, Gothenburg University. Her research interests are oriented towards the social and political sciences and can be summarised as: 1) feminist and social theory; 2) politics and policy, mobilisation, activism and opposition; 3) gendered and intersectional perspectives on sustainability; and 4) feminist violence studies, in online/offline contexts. She applies both qualitative and quantitative methods. Sofia Strid co-directs the three-university GEXcel International Collegium for Advanced Transdisciplinary Gender Studies with Senior Professor Liisa Husu, and chairs two research strands within the field Gender, Violence & Society. Sofia Strid also directs the Centre for Violence Studies, together with Dr Susanne Strand, Associate Professor in Criminology, and leads the research group Feminist Violence Studies. Sofia Strid’s research has been funded by the European Commission, the European Parliament, the European Institute for Gender Equality, the Swedish Research Council and FORTE.

To alleviate the impacts of COVID-19 policies, many initiatives have been developed by civil society organisations – NGOs, local governments, or citizens. A team of national researchers from the RESISTIRÉ project has collected and highlighted a set of particularly relevant initiatives in 27 European countries and in Iceland, Serbia, the United Kingdom and Turkey. These Better Stories currently cover eight specific domains: gender-based violence, the labour market, the economy, gender-pay and pension gaps, gender care gaps, decision-making and politics, environmental justice, human and fundamental rights.

In Spain, the “Urgent measures for the protection and assistance to victims of gender-based violence (Law 1/2021)” addressed the special vulnerability of women victims of GBV and trafficking due to the policies enforced in relation to Covid-19. It considered GBV as a threat to human rights, which needs to be tackled by guaranteeing access to integrated social assistance.

The law aimed at maintaining and adapting existing services (integrated assistance and protection services) to ensure their functioning during the pandemic, establishing organizational measures as well as adaptation of the modes of provision.

To this end, such services were declared essential and the law explicitly states that these services shall be guaranteed to all women, “regardless their ethnicity, socio-economic level, age, migrant status, functional diversity, disability, dependency, place of residence and any other situation” amounting to intersectional discrimination. The law makes specific reference to women with disability and women living in rural areas and the barriers they may experience in accessing the support services.

Photo by Javier García on Unsplash

To alleviate the impacts of COVID-19 policies, many initiatives have been developed by civil society organisations – NGOs, local governments, or citizens. A team of national researchers from the RESISTIRÉ project has collected and highlighted a set of particularly relevant initiatives in 27 European countries and in Iceland, Serbia, the United Kingdom and Turkey. The initiatives currently cover eight specific domains: gender-based violence, the labour market, the economy, gender-pay and pension gaps, gender care gaps, decision-making and politics, environmental justice, human and fundamental rights.

In Serbia, KonekTaS platform produced guidelines to draw attention to the vulnerable situation of women and children victims of gender-based and domestic violence during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The various restrictions to prevent the spread of COVID-19 required innovative solutions from social workers to adapt their practices. Teleworking was quite a challenge for social workers, and even more so as the needs for their services rapidly increased. Quarantine and psychological tensions caused by the pandemic led to an increase in domestic violence, while women and children living in abusive households saw their conditions deteriorating. Forced contact between victims and perpetrators during lockdown, women kept hostage in violent relationships and unable, but also change in family dynamics, challenges related to gender roles of women and men, the reorganisation of child-care responsibilities, and the financial impact of the crisis on household were among the most difficult working environments for social workers in Serbia.

Recommendations on the platform aimed to map the available resources for rapid response during the Covid-19 crisis, with safety plans for victims of domestic violence and violence against women.

The guidelines were created within the volunteer service of the Faculty of Political Science (FPN), University of Belgrade, with the support of UNICEF and USAID offices in Belgrade. This service is an interactive online platform that brings together practitioners, teachers, and students of social work and social policy to share new theoretical and practical knowledge, professional experiences and dilemmas and strategies for overcoming obstacles in everyday work. FPN KonekTas brings together associates who want to build together a safe, supportive, inclusive and stimulating gathering place for learning and research, for connecting and exchanging with colleagues and for coordinated collection and distribution of information relevant to all practitioners and theorists in social work.

The direct target group was social workers but the guidelines were relevant for social work students and policy makers too. One of the initiative’s main achievements has been connecting the academic community with social work practitioners. Thanks to the initiative, students were introduced to the potential problems and challenges faced by social workers working with victims of gender-based violence and at the same time could access solutions and clear instructions for dealing with difficult cases.

Read more about the platform on UNICEF’s website

Photo credit: UNICEF