Tomorrow is International Womens Day. On this day, women all across the world celebrate the womens movement.
In Malaysia this year, the womens movement will observe the International Womens Day by advocating and lobbying for law and policy reform on issues of violence against women.
The Womens Aid Organisation would like to address violence against women in the workplace; focusing on sexual harassment and foreign domestic worker abuse.
Sexual harassment is a prevalent problem that many women face in the workplace. It has largely been dismissed as a trivial problem that has no serious repercussions but studies have shown that it has real implications on productivity, efficiency and employee turnover, and can also result in stress related physical injuries in the victims.
More importantly, by not addressing the issue, it is tantamount to endorsing abuse of power in the workplace.
In a survey conducted by the Womens Development Collective and All Womens Action Society, 92.8 percent women have been victims of some form of sexual harassment on the job.
Sexual harassment is not about mutual attraction, it is about abuse of power. Due to the hierarchical nature of a workplace, a superior with power over position and wages can abuse this power by making sexual advances or exerting pressure to compliance with the threat of dismissal.
Sexual harassment can have severe consequences to the victims sense of safety, self-worth and confidence and can pose a serious threat to the space that women everywhere have fought hard to claim in the working environment.
We urge the Malaysian government to legislate on sexual harassment to provide meaningful recourse to victims of sexual harassment and to prevent further discrimination of women in the workplace.
Foreign domestic workers are an especially vulnerable section in the working society. This is because they face multiple discrimination as women and as foreigners in the country. Abuse of foreign domestic workers is becoming one of the growing concerns in Malaysia as more cases are being brought to the public attention by the media.
Yet xenophobic responses to the violence impedes the protection of their rights as employees.
Foreign domestic workers are perceived to be culturally inferior with negative values and the propensity to harm our families. Surely one race is not superior to another. Foreign domestic workers are seen as economic entities with no human rights, thus not requiring any form of protection mechanisms.
The lack of legal safeguard encourages severe physical, psychological and economical abuse and when a foreign domestic worker is beaten, raped or cheated, she will find that she have very little recourse to justice.
We urge that the Malaysian public extend their compassion and respect for human rights to foreign workers.
We also urge the Malaysian government to formulate and implement a standard employment contract between employers and foreign domestic workers to ensure that their rights as employees are protected.
This year, WAO recognises the value of working women in our country, and we call upon every single Malaysian to join the efforts of the womens movement to eliminate discrimination and to end violence against women.
As stated by the United Nations Secretary general Kofi Annan in his message for this years International Womens Day, ...as we prepare for the vital challenges before us, let us all be mindful that the achievement of womens rights is not the responsibility of women alone it is the responsibility of us all.
