16 Days of Activism: Heat Up Women’s Rights, Not the Planet! End Gender Based Violence
As every year, BWI affiliates will join the 16 days of activism campaign and call to end all forms of gender-based violence at home and workplaces. For many women workers in the building and construction, and wood and forestry industries, many workplaces remain difficult and dangerous with high cases of gender-based violence. They are suffering the impact of a male-dominated and stereotypical culture which wrongly assumes that women workers are “not capable” of doing the jobs in the different trades. Moreover, many workplaces are considered “dirty” due to the hazardous materials and other environmental conditions. It is widely acknowledged that industries where BWI affiliates are working make a significant contribution to climate change as they emit on average more than 40 percent of annual greenhouse gas emissions (GHG).
Climate change makes work in industries where BWI affiliates are found more dangerous, and in many cases, unbearable for workers’ health. Extreme heatwaves, environmental degradation and other climate-induced disasters are not a distant abstraction, but the new normal for BWI affiliates. Extreme temperatures and weather events threaten workers’ physical and mental health, escalate occupational health and safety hazards for outdoor workers, and even lead to unnecessary deaths.
For BWI’s women workers, the global climate crisis is never gender-neutral. Intensifying and persisting climate crisis-related extreme weather events impact on work process and job tenure, and exacerbates gender-based violence. The occurrence of extreme weather events deepens the gender divide. It brings socio-economic instability, displacements, breakdowns in safety and increased health-care related needs, with the biggest brunt carried by women workers. Women workers are the first to lose their jobs or to be pushed into informal work, home-based work in the brick and/or other materials industries, further deepening discrimination and exposure to gender-based violence.
Gender-based violence is one of the extreme forms of discrimination and inequality. As climate change increases women vulnerability to all forms of discrimination and violence, it is essential to integrate elimination of gender-based violence in all the strategies to combat the climate crisis. To ensure fairness in a just transition, there should be full, effective and meaningful participation and leadership of women workers in the industries. Only by ensuring women’s participation and leadership can we effectively enable them to identify challenges and solutions to their intersecting challenges. By doing so, many workplaces once considered difficult, dangerous and dirty will finally become skilled, safe and sustainable workplaces free from all forms of gender-based violence and abuses.
Under the slogan “Heat Up Women’s Rights, not the Planet! End Gender-Based Violence!,” BWI states that protecting and promoting safe and inclusive working environments free of violence and discrimination against women is critical for achieving gender equality and effectively mitigating and adapting to climate change. In the industries where BWI is actively present and impacted greatly by climate change, it is imperative that equity and equality are included in policies and practices to promote a just transition benefitting all workers.
Heat up women’s rights, not the planet!
There is no climate justice without gender justice!
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