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Online version of Factive’s report for the ILO on gender equality in the Myanmar garment industry.
The ILO is pleased to share the online version of its recently published report on gender equality in the Myanmar garment industry.
“We found that human resources managers admit they prefer to employ women. Managers tend to draw on assumptions about innate gender characteristics whereby women are seen as more docile and naturally more capable of completing work tasks that require attention to detail, such as sewing,” explains Dean Laplonge, the author of the research.
Weaving Gender is the result of many months of meticulous research inside factories and in stakeholder forums where preliminary findings of the gender assessment were discussed.
The online version is available here.
Weaving Gender with the ILO in Myanmar
Factive’s principal consultant, Dean Laplonge, yesterday presented a summary of his research results at the official launch of the report Weaving Gender.
This report provides detailed information on the results of a gender-equality assessment carried out in 16 Yangon-based factories in Myanmar’s garment sector.
Weaving Gender is the result of many months of meticulous research and stakeholders forums where the preliminary findings of the gender assessment were discussed. The ILO Improving labour relations for decent work and sustainable development in the Myanmar garment industry (ILO-GIP), which receives funding support from the Swedish international development agency (Sida) and H&M, is pleased to share a picture of the industry which, despite the challenges, is encouraging. We invite all the industry stakeholders to join hands in the spirit of social dialogue to ensure that workers in the industry, especially women, can enjoy decent work.
You can download a copy of the English version of the report using the link below. The Myanmar language version will be available soon.
Gender Based Violence Awareness Raising
The new toolkit for raising awareness on gender based violence in conflict-affected Syrian communities was launched at the Topkapı Sarayı restaurant in Gaziantep, Turkey, on Friday. This marked the start of 16 Days of Activism to tackle violence against women and girls in Syria.
The toolkit – Hearing and Being Voices in Syria: Working Together to Raise Awareness on GBV – was developed by Factive’s consultant Dean Laplonge for the GBV Sub-Cluster in June this year. It provides comprehensive programs for raising awareness about GBV with women, men, adolescent girls and adolescent boys in Syria. Each program aims to deliver seven key GBV messages to the target audiences using a total of 84 participatory activities spread across 21 sessions in each program.
The seven key GBV messages are:
- Key Message A: The root cause of GBV is gender inequality
- Key Message B: Knowledge of and access to GBV services can save lives
- Key Message C: Mutual support can help prevent GBV and ensure good responses to GBV
- Message D: Child marriage is a form of GBV
- Key Message E: Domestic violence is a form of GBV
- Key Message F: It is not shameful to discuss sexuality and sexual violence
- Key message G: Virginity testing is a form of GBV
Dean delivered the first train-the-trainer course this week in Gaziantep for representatives of some of the Sub-cluster organizations.
He will be working closely with UNFPA and Global Communities to continue this training this coming week, and to assist with developing an inter-agency roll-out plan to promote consistent and effective delivery of the messages throughout Syria.
#RespectfulWorkplaces
The third annual Women in Business and Leadership Development Conference was recently held in Yangon, Myanmar. Factive consultants were in attendance to deliver early findings from the Respectful Workplaces in Myanmar research study, supported by the IFC and the DaNa Facility. Many thanks to AustCham Myanmar for organising a great conference and for allowing us to participate.
The research team at Factive would also like to thank everyone who has helped to promote and support this project. Interest has been extremely strong compared to similar studies of this type with over 50 organisations across a range of sectors signing up to participate. Our national consultants, Thiri and Moh Moh, have done an incredible job managing the extensive data collection work.
In January, we will be ready to start sharing the research results with participating businesses and other stakeholders. We plan to hold a workshop with each of these groups to discuss what the results mean and how they can inform future work to create more respectful workplaces in Myanmar.
A small selection of photos of the event are provided below, courtesy of the event organiser, AustCham Myanmar. Photographer: Sebastian Higgison, Storgaard Photography.
#MeToo in Review
A year after #MeToo started trending on Twitter, an article in The Economist suggests that “this year-long storm of allegations, confessions and firings has actually made Americans more sceptical about sexual harassment.”
YouGov surveys of 1,500 Amercians on their attitudes towards the topic conducted in November 2017 and again in September 2018 found that attitudes had shifted against the victims over that period. The attitudes of female respondents had shifted more than those of males.
One of the largest changes relates to the increasing perception that “False accusations of sexual assault are a bigger problem than unreported assaults.” The Economist article points out that (according to the National Sexual Violence Resource Centre) false reports of sexual assault are relatively rare, whereas 63% of sexual assaults are never reported to police.
We can also observe that there was a much stronger split of attitudes between Trump voters and Clinton voters than there was between the attitudes of men and women. This partisan difference was very much on display during the recent Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearing.
Clean Energy Council Innovation Award 2017
Congratulations to our talented consultant, Sue Griffin, who is a co-creator of an award-winning Australian-first electricity pricing innovation which works like a mobile phone plan, with an app to track usage. It was joint winner of the Innovation Award by the Clean Energy Council and shortlisted for the Business Community Engagement award. The pilot engaged the public as collaborators using an app, Facebook group, interviews, forums, surveys and video. This new product is being introduced into regional Western Australia.
Horizon Power has run a research pilot to test the features of a smart new pricing model for a 21st century energy system. It’s a new way of charging for electricity similar to a mobile phone plan. The idea is to leverage mobile phone literacy, rather than trying to build electricity literacy.
The research pilot was run for four months in Port Hedland over a summer, with very high customer engagement across multiple channels. The pilot engaged the public as collaborators using an app, Facebook group, interviews, forums, surveys and video. 407 participants volunteered to test the app and see if they could stay under the hourly peak allowance set for them by Horizon Power. This provided insight into people’s willingness and ability to manage their consumption or leverage technology in return for financial benefit.
See this ABC news article, or the video for more info: