Palm | Kelapa Sawit

Fashion industry has often been suspected of widespread sexual harassment. The Italian fashion brand Prada is now at the receiving end in Japan where employees are accusing the senior company executives of perpetrating sexual discrimination and sexual harassment in the name of "brand image." Read it here.

But workplace sexual harassment in Japan does not make headlines even though it is suspected to be widespread and acceptable. The mainstream Japanese media has by and large ignored the Prada lawsuit. The Japan Times, an online news portal, though had this detailed coverage.

Workplace sexual harassment is quite common in Asia. But businesses don't recognise this as a problem. Most Asian countries either do not have legislation or do not enforce laws to address workplace harassment. In recent years, the issue has received increased attention due to campaigning by women rights organisations. But businesses as well as governments have not shown any eagerness to respond.

We did a story on workplace sexual harassment in Ethical Corporation magazine in October 2oo8. See the report here.

Aware, a Singapore-based women rights organisation, has developed a training programme for companies to create awareness about the problem of workplace sexual harassment and ways to prevent and address it. In a couple of hours from now, the programme will be launched in a seminar. I will be attending it as a panelist and will be sharing corporate responsibility perspective on workplace sexual harassment. Their training information can be found here.

Association of Women for Action and Research (AWARE), a Singapore-based rights organisation, is organising a free seminar on "sexual harassment: protecting your organisation" on the 22nd April. The event is to launch AWARE's training programme for companies on sexual harassment.

The event is particularly useful for HR policy makers, corporate responsibility professionals, corporate counsels and anyone with an interest in the workplace harassment issue. For more details, see here.

Aware is the first women rights NGO in Singapore to have developed a workplace sexual harassment training programme for companies after several years of research.

In 2007 and 2008, AWARE conducted a survey of sexual harassment at the workplace. The NGO also gathered information about companies’ sexual harassment practices and policies, and recommendations on legal recourse for victims of workplace sexual harassment.

Key survey findings were:

-More than 50% of respondents said they had experienced some form of sexual harassment at their workplace.

-1 in 4 knew of people who had experienced some form of sexual harassment.

-Of those who experienced sexual harassment, 34% of women respondents and 19.2% of men respondents reported being harassed several times.

Singapore companies have shown remarkable reluctance to recognize that sexual harassment is a real issue that needs to be addressed by way of a firm policy and action.

AWARE's new training programme is an opportunity for all companies to make use of the training and introduce long overdue policy on sexual harassment.