Sexual Harassment at Work: Help victims find suitable solutions

Gender Based Violence is a cross-cutting topic to all ITCILO programmes and in 2019 there will the anniversary of the Women at Work ILO initiative. Game elements such as storytelling and narrative, fictional characters, role reversal, time triggers and re-plicability of stories can be used to raise awareness towards GBV at work.

Both men and women are victims of violence at work. However gender-based patterns of exposure are significantly influenced by sexual division of labour: men are concentrated in some types of jobs and women in others. As a result there are real differences between the incidence rates for male and female workers. Women are concentrated in many high-risk occupations, particularly as teachers, social workers, nurses, health care workers, shop workers. The continued segregation of women in low-paid and low-status jobs, while men predominate in better- paid, higher status jobs and supervisory positions contributes to gender-based differences in exposure to particular forms of workplace violence such as bullying.

An online gamified module “Sexual Harassment at the Workplace: Help Victims find suitable solution” is created to allow learners recognizing situations at risk, making them take action and decisions. The stories do not have a unique end but three possible endings. According to the learner’s choices, the learning path will be different as reality is not correct or incorrect, but multiple nuances co-exist according with how we interact with people (personalised learning and replicability).

The module also provides feedback on how the working environment can support working women dealing with these situations e.g what information is available? Is there a special ILO Convention? Are there any procedures?