Education and OHS key to countering GBVF

The problem of gender-based violence and femicide (GBVF) prevention is both immense and difficult to address. Studies estimate that almost one in three women experience physical and/or sexual violence in their lifetime – and this figure does not include sexual harassment or gender discrimination.

A Shared Value Africa Initiative (SVAI) research report* conservatively estimates that South Africa lost more than R36 billion due to GBV in 2019 alone.

To address this widespread and profound problem, the Department of Mineral and Petroleum Resources (DMPR) issued a guidance note for the management of GBVF, safety, and security challenges for women in the South African mining industry in August 2024.

This guidance note aims to assist all stakeholders regarding their roles and responsibilities; the importance of policies, procedures, and training; implementation plans; and monitoring and evaluation. While the guidance note applies to the South African mining industry and communities, all industries in South Africa can learn from it.

Traditionally, a complaints-based system backed by supporting legislation (such as the Employment Equity Act) was relied upon to address GBVF issues. Thus, to tackle GBVF, the incident needed to be reported, investigated thoroughly, and the perpetrator punished.

Shifting this into the Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) framework allows an approach based on prevention, by leveraging existing frameworks and tools. This enables proactive, systematic, collective, inclusive, and publicly enforceable prevention approaches. Prevention is at the core of OHS frameworks; the heart of this is the systematic management of health and safety risks.

Both the OHS Act and the Mine Health and Safety Act require organisations to provide safe and healthy workplaces. OHS laws are uniquely placed to involve a wide variety of workplace actors in preventing and addressing GBVF and harassment. Looking at psychosocial risks (such as GBVF and harassment) enables organisations to develop immediate, positive, and proactive tools and measures to ensure holistic health and safety.

By bringing GBVF into the OHS frameworks, employers and other duty holders must proactively take reasonably practicable measures to prevent workers from being exposed to the risk of GBVF. This also ensures that GBVF and sexual harassment are not considered to be private matters only, and draws attention to organisational, environmental, and industrial contributing factors. In addition, the burden on the target of GBVF to report and prove the wrongdoing is alleviated.

Grouping GBVF inside OHS frameworks adds extra duties and liabilities to officers within an organisation. This can be a powerful motivator to address GBVF and garner support and commitment from management. However, OHS laws also impose duties on employees and workers to exercise reasonable care for the health and safety of other persons in the workplace. This duty would then also include GBVF prevention.

Worker representation, consultation, and participation are integral to OHS management systems. These aspects helps managers to develop better approaches to OHS by leveraging workers’ intimate and unique knowledge of the risks, and the measures required to control those risks. Risk assessments create channels for workers to reveal the situations where they (or others) are at risk; it is crucial to involve them in identifying hazards and control measures – as well as risk assessments for any changes to embed these within the organisation. This includes instances that might otherwise have escaped the organisation’s attention, such as those that involve social media or work-related situations that take place away from the organisation’s premises.

Worker participation in the development and adoption of GBVF policies facilitates co-created prevention policies that lead to a common understanding of what behaviour constitutes GBVF – within the work environment and beyond.

In one of its reports, the International Labour Organization considers that at a practical level, the main impediment to the implementation of anti-harassment measures in workplaces is often the lack of guidance, tools, and awareness raising.

The report, “Preventing and addressing violence and harassment in the world of work through occupational safety and health measures”, suggests a high demand for detailed instructions, guidance, training, and/or specialist support to translate legal provisions on work-related violence and harassment into practice. This is especially true at the organisational level.

Characteristics of such an OHS framework
Even though psychosocial risks fall within the scope of protection in OHS legislation, there is a common perception that they are not OHS issues, but rather Human Resources (HR) issues. A biopsychosocial model accounts for biological, psychological, and social aspects and the interconnection between these elements. Moving from a technical and medical model of OHS to a biopsychosocial model will therefore highlight and address risks such as GBVF.

GBVF risks are not as readily identifiable as traditional OHS risks. As such, risk identification capacity needs to be increased to accommodate this. The risk assessments should consider the industry, environmental, and individual risk factors for GBVF. Each organisation and site will have a unique combination of these factors that increase the risk and drive occurrences of GBVF. Factors include:

• Poor workplace cultures where inappropriate and/or disrespectful behaviours are accepted.
• Isolated or remote work.
• Barriers to reporting or reports not being taken seriously.
• Limited understanding of the nature and causes of sexual harassment and GBVF.

source: https://sheqmanagement.com/education-and-ohs-key-to-countering-gbvf/