Further Statistics on Gender-Based Violence 

  • Worldwide, between 40 and 50 per cent of women report experiencing unwanted physical contact, sexual advances or other forms of harassment and abuse at work
  • A report by Sisters For Change and Munnade found that 1 in 7 women workers in garment factories in Bangalore has been forced either to commit a sexual act or to have sexual intercourse.
  • The garment industry is made up of 80% women, and is among the most deadly industries in the world. In 2013, the Rana Plaza factory collapsed in Bangladesh, killing more than 1100 workers. Prior to the collapse, women workers asked to leave when they saw smoke, and a crack in the building, but they were beaten and threatened with loss of income if they left. Those same women later had to jump from third story windows, to be cut out of a collapsed building, or to lose their lives.
  • Some 87 percent of Bangladeshi women have been victims of various forms of domestic violence in their lifetime, according to the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, which conducted the first-ever national census on women and violence in December 2013.
  • In 2009, the legal research and advocacy group ASISTA surveyed more than 100 women working at Iowa meatpacking plants. 41 percent said they’d experienced unwanted touching, and about 30 percent reported receiving sexual propositions.  More than 25 percent of the women said had been threatened with firing or harder work by their aggressor.
  • A 2010 UC Santa Cruz study of 150 female farmworkers in California found that nearly 40 percent experienced sexual harassment ranging from verbal advances to rape on the job, and 24 percent said they had experienced sexual coercion by a supervisor.
  • In Kenya, research involving 400 workers in export-oriented factories and tea and coffee plantations found over 90 percent of women had experience or observed sexual abuse within their workplace, and that 95% of all women who had suffered workplace sexual abuse were afraid to report the problem, for fear of losing their jobs.  Almost half of the respondents were single mothers with school age children. In addition, the women interviewed overwhelmingly noted that the promotions in the EPZ (90%), the coffee (80%) and the tea (79%) sector were related to some form of sexual relationship with a supervisor.
  • In Tunisia, a recent AFTURD study on full-time domestic workers found that 14.2% reported as having been victims of sexual abuse, and 18.2% into forced sexual intercourse.   Also, many claimed that their low status made them vulnerable to street harassment.