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Eager to go to work but afraid of losing their jobs, migrant and refugee women facing sexual harassment in Australian workplaces often find themselves placed in an impossible situation.
A new report from the Australian National Research Organization for Women’s Safety – or ANROWS – reveals that almost half (46%) of more than 850 migrant and refugee women surveyed said they had experienced sexual harassment at work in the over the last five years.
But it also highlighted how little is being done to address the problem.
Professor Marie Segrave of the University of Melbourne is the lead author of the report.
She says the high rates of harassment are significant.
“The other really significant finding is that women often experience sexual harassment in the workplace at the same time and alongside other forms of discrimination and abuse in the workplace, those kinds of practices, which It was very important for us to highlight. And one of the things we found in the beginning, the women we spoke with saw sexual harassment as part of an unsafe workplace. main thing they focused on, it was part of of a context.
The harassment included indecent phone calls or messages of a sexual nature, intimidating stares or leering glances, or indiscreet questions about privacy or physical appearance.
Most women who experienced sexual harassment described these experiences as less severe, but as occurring consistently and having a serious and ongoing impact on women.
ANROWS CEO Dr Tessa Boyd-Caine explains.
“It’s important to recognize that while we sometimes talk about sexual harassment as low-level, some of the behaviors we looked at in this report are just completely unacceptable. So women talked about inappropriate touching, sexual jokes and harmful stereotypes about attitudes in terms of their cultural background linked to a certain identity, there is simply no place for this type of behavior in 2024. And at the same time, the women participating in this research have spoke of spectators in the workplace, joking, behaving like witnesses even if this behavior was just a joke or turning a blind eye.”
Women explained how these experiences often intersected with other types of discrimination or exploitation in the workplace, including racism.
Dr Boyd-Caine says this means the systems currently in place for reporting sexual harassment in the workplace may not be suitable for migrant and refugee women.
She says it’s important to consider measures such as extending exit interviews or deadlines for filing complaints, to allow women to disclose their experiences when they feel safer to do so.
“We have different systems for addressing, reporting and responding to sexual harassment versus the process of working on certain types of visas or even obtaining migration status. But for migrant and refugee women working in Australia Today, these are interrelated conditions and have a significant impact on their ability to work in a safe environment. Our systems must therefore do better. Migrant and refugee women must therefore recognize this context and the fact that sexual harassment occurs. intersects with insecurity on workplace around visa status or migration.
In fact, migrant and refugee women were very reluctant to report this behavior.
Women reported being too afraid to reveal their experience, for fear of losing their jobs, or witnessing little action taken in response to previous complaints.
Others even reported being threatened or told not to file a complaint for fear of losing their jobs.
Professor Segrave says workplace cultures often discourage women from revealing their experiences.
“One of the biggest challenges is silence. Even if people complain, they tend to remain silent or silenced, but there is also no acknowledgment of the perpetrator or the action People are quietly moved. People sometimes leave their workplace, often women leave, so nothing happens. So we found that people told us that the silence was pervasive and discouraged women who did so. experience, but also suggested that nothing would actually happen. There would be no proactive engagement with the wrongness of this behavior, no acknowledgment that it had happened.
ANROWS is committed to the Government’s National Plan to end violence against women and children by 2032.
The first annual report tracking the progress of the plan has been published.
Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence Commissioner Micaela Cronin spoke to the National Press Club about the influence of online misogyny on young men as a contributing factor to gender-based violence.
“They are attracted to what some of the voices they hear are saying because it gives them an idea of how to be a man. We need to get better. We need to do a better job of talking to these young men. We need to do a better job of talking to them. listen. We need men to lead these conversations.
The first progress report also said governments needed better data on violent men; and their pathways into and out of violence; and must develop more intervention options.
Dr Boyd-Caine hopes the ANROW report can help inform the national plan on the unique barriers faced by migrant and refugee women.
“First, we must recognize that sexual harassment, in any context, and particularly in the workplace, is part of the gender-based violence women experience in this country. It is part of how bias-related behaviors But we also need to understand the context in which this occurs. It is therefore essential to look specifically at the experiences of migrant and refugee women to understand what types of systems and services are needed. women in different communities and in different contexts and to ensure that this happens our systems do not assume one size fits all.”
Professor Segrave agrees that solutions to this problem must be multi-faceted.
She says it’s essential to understand how these behaviors intersect with other forms of discrimination, in order to respond appropriately.
“A lot of work is underway in Victoria, with recent announcements on the use of non-disclosure agreements. Changes in this area would be transformative to stop silencing women, but also to have better recognition of what is happening But we also have We need to recognize the importance of job security and the fact that there is no sense of job security in this context speaks volumes about our failure, at the. both in terms of politics outside the workplace, but also within the workplace.
Professor Segrave adds that more research is also needed on perpetrators and companies to better understand the problem.
“So we need to better understand who is doing this. We need to be able to better capture repeated behaviors. One of the things is that the perpetrators can be moved quietly, and then you’ll see someone get a job somewhere else and think How have they just gone from being a major problem here to now getting this job? We need to better understand who the perpetrators are, what companies are doing to combat the perpetration, but also really understand the types of insidious behaviors that are occurring? ‘they commit a part. will go unnoticed.”
