The Solidarity Center and worker rights organizations like the Lanka Eksath Jathika Workers Union in Sri Lanka advocated for a landmark global standard to eliminate gender-based violence and harassment at work and are pushing for its ratification by governments. Credit: Solidarity Center/Sean Stephen
The Solidarity Center prioritizes preventing and addressing gender-based violence and harassment in the world of work, recognizing it is a primary barrier to achieving gender equality and a key step for security of all workers’ rights. The Solidarity Center seeks to enhance the voice of women and other marginalized workers in policy making at the local, national, and international levels to reduce the risk of gender-based violence at work and build leadership, voice and direct participation of women and other marginalized workers and their unions.
Beginning in 2014, the Solidarity Center was a core member of a global coalition of worker rights organizations led by women union activists that successfully advocated for a landmark global standard (Convention 190) to eliminate violence and harassment in the world of work, including gender-based violence and harassment which was adopted by the International Labor Organization in June 2019. We support our partners as they campaign for their governments to ratify ILO Convention 190.
See related factsheets, videos and reports.
This week, the Philippines became the first Asian country to ratify the International Labor Organization (ILO) Convention No. 190, in a unanimous vote in the Philippine Senate. ILO C190, or the “Convention Concerning the Elimination of Violence and Harassment in the...
In South Africa, 98 percent of women garment and retail workers surveyed in 2022 said they had experienced one or more forms of gender-based violence or harassment, including physical abuse, unwanted sexual advances, psychological abuse, bullying and rape. To better...
Sexual harassment and other forms of gender-based violence are rampant in garment factories in Bangladesh and throughout the textile production and retail industry in South Africa, according to two recently published Solidarity Center reports. The sample surveys are...
A survey of garment workers in Sri Lanka, conducted in partnership with Solidarity Center and IndustriALL, found employer opposition and harassment has limited their ability to form unions and address workplace rights violations such as increased workloads and work...
An alarming 57.5 percent of women workers interviewed across all sectors for this Nigeria Labor Congress (NLC) report say they experienced gender-based violence and harassment (GBVH) in the world of work. More than one-third of respondents said that even when...
Where unions establish collective bargaining, they initiate the strongest mechanism for protecting agricultural workers’ rights, health and dignity. Through analysis of five agribusiness sectors—including palm oil in Colombia, bananas in Guatemala, strawberries in...
As a new wave of COVID-19 hits Cambodia, a new study recommends urgent action to ensure garment and tourism workers workers do not experience widespread loss of jobs and wages as they did in 2020. The Center for Policy Studies survey is supported by Solidarity Center...
Women working in South Africa's mining sector report being subject to sexual and gender-based violence and harassment, inside mines and within the mining communities where they live and efforts to redress such abuse must address the nature of the workplace and...
The governments of Mexico and the United States have supported the growth of the Mexican berry sector by creating conditions for a cheap supply of labor and profit growth. Mexican field workers receive an estimated 12 cents per pound of strawberries sold in U.S....
