By Irene Charnley

There is the adage that people should leave personal issues at home. After all, it is nobody’s business.  The truth is gender-based violence and femicide (GBVF) is a scourge that needs resources and must be collectively addressed everywhere and all the time.

GBVF is not a respecter of status, class, race, age, culture or creed. Unfortunately, none of these characteristics, individually or collectively, are a panacea from gender-based violence at home, at work and anywhere.

Regrettably, there is no one-size-fits-all strategy to eliminate GBVF. Effective strategic plans may share several features, but they must be tailored to the needs, resources, and circumstances of victims.

Resources are the foundation for tackling gender-based violence.
As with most other risks, prevention of GBVF begins with meticulous planning.

Why did the IWFSA lead the GBVF response FUND1

The International Women’s Forum South Africa (IWFSA) has aided the government in a fund-raising drive to augment government resources.

This has birthed the private sector led Gender Based Violence and Femicide (“GBVF”) RESPONSE FUND1, the culmination of the successful collaboration between the public and private sector which at launch, raised more than R128-million.

The GBVF Response Fund1, which is planned to operate for two years, honours and recognises women and girls whose lives and voices mattered, however were silenced by the GBVF pandemic, and the inability to put enough resources behind ending it. This is our response to the plight of women and children across all 44 districts of our country, who live in fear, and die every day, due the GBVF pandemic.

The aim of the Response Fund is to support the National Strategic Plan (“NSP”) on GBVF, whose foundation is based on five key interventions that seek to eliminate women’s vulnerabilities.  They are:

• An urgent response order to support victims and survivors of GBVF,
• Broadening access to justice for survivors,
• Changing social norms and behaviour through high-level awareness raising and prevention campaigns,
• Strengthening existing architecture for intervention programmes and promoting accountability and
• The need to create more economic opportunities for women who are vulnerable to abuse due to poverty, unemployment and social inequality.

The private sector stake in the prevention of GBVF

The private sector not only has a fundamental role in the prevention of GBVF, and in the social and economic empowerment of survivors, but also needs to demonstrateresponsible corporate citizenship.

The first step in addressing GBVF is understanding and learning about it.  GBVF is a pattern of coercive behaviour, including acts or threatened acts, used by a perpetrator to gain power and control over a current or former intimate partner, family member and even a stranger, resulting in injuries and even death.

Violence against women and children is not a linear process. It is not a straight line that gets worse and worse nor a cycle that comes and goes and comes back again just to traumatise someone.

Judging by GBVF statistics, the scourge is like a tornado or a twister that gathers momentum as it builds up a destructive power and swallows a person and those around her toward its vortex and then spits them out, leaving them battered and disoriented.

Daily, South African women are victims of gender-based violence including sexual harassment and assault in the workplace.  Our sisters are forced to work in an intimidating, hostile or humiliating environment, and experience various unwelcome forms of sexual conduct. Ultimately, this grossly negatively impacts productivity and leads to financial loss in the business.

“battered woman syndrome”

Daily, women bear the brunt of requests for sexual favours, inappropriate jokes and unwanted physical contact tantamount to assault. Despite its massive scale, GBVF remains under-reported because of fear of disbelief, blame, or social and/or professional retaliation.

The theory of “battered woman syndrome” described by psychologist and battered women’s advocate, Lenore Walker, argues that “some women who have endured long histories of abuse are so transformed through terror and suffering that they perceive and respond to the world very differently than people who do not share their gender and their experience of abuse”. One component of battered woman syndrome, in Walker’s view, is what she calls “learned helplessness,” that is, an acquired sense that one cannot control what happens or intervene effectively in the course of events.

Walker builds her theory on evidence that a battering relationship typically moves through “a tension building phase”, in which a woman experiences “walking on eggshells” and tries a variety of strategies to avoid or defer a violent incident; the acute phase, in which a batterer inflicts severe harm over a period ranging from two to twenty-four hours (but in some cases stretching to a week or more); and an unreliable respite phase of kindness and contrite, loving behaviour.

This is sometimes referred to as the “honeymoon” phase.  The psychologists believe at best, this is a shaky reprieve within a context of coercion, threat, restricted options and injury.

In a concluding summary, described as the “love, hope, fear”, Walker states that the cycle continues in a spiral with the tension-building period getting longer, the violence more intense and the respite period getting less and less.

Demonstrate responsible corporate citizenship

The private sector not only has a stake in the prevention of GBVF, and a responsibility to the social and economic empowerment of survivors, but also needs to demonstrate responsible corporate citizenship in the proposed construct.

Indeed, the private sector can have a positive impact on employees and help end GBVF by creating an environment where all workers are trained and there are clear policies in place that address the issue without fear or favour.

GBVF response FUND1 key objectives

The Fund, chaired by Dr Judy Dlamini, prominent businesswoman and academic, has been structured with the highest governance processes, and the funding approach is grounded on principles of fairness, integrity, women empowerment, social consciousness and measurable impact.

The Fund ensures that it builds a transparent and robust grant-making system that could potentially be transferred into a public GBVF fund in the future.

Amongst other key objectives, this Fund will:

• Support measures that seek to eradicate GBVF as per National Strategic Plan.
• Provide a channel for the private sector to make wider contributions.
• Make resources accessible – priority to grassroots organisations and non-governmental organisations.
•  Strengthen existing architecture for GBVF intervention programs through partnerships.
• Support/fund research and data collection.
• Provide technical support for the delivery of GBVF programmes.
• Facilitate operational and strategic cohesion between donors, the private sector and the South African government and
• Ensure accountability and sound governance through the Board and performance measurements.

Pro-bono services

We have assembled critical partners from the most reputable private sector companies, who are all contributing their resources on a pro bono basis to help us with legal agreements, tax implications, corporate bank accounts, balance sheet management, project management capacity, donations, administration of the fund, cash flow management, disbursements to beneficiaries, asset management platform, actuarial services, sustainability management  to ensure the fund accounts properly, advisory and governance services, overview of management accounts, accounting policies, governance documentation and auditing services.

Women and girl children, who constitute the majority of citizens in South Africa, live in fear. It is time for action with measurable results through the GBVF Response Fund1.

This fund is setting a concrete pathway and clear recognition that gender equity through sharing of economic benefits is the only way to secure the social and economic prosperity of South Africa.

This collaborative approach between interdependent stakeholders in combating GBVF reinforces the fact that a thriving business and economy is dependent on social stability.

Collective and strategic leadership needed

The private sector is a key player to help achieve the strategic objectives of fighting GBVF, with leadership from the private sector and philanthropic sector needed to secure active participation and financial investment to effectively respond to the scourge of gender-based violence and femicide in South Africa.

The struggle against GBV and Femicide requires a collective and strategic leadership approach. No one can eradicate this scourge alone. All sectors need partnerships to create safe communities.

Let us harness the collective resources of the private sector and tackle the GBVF pandemic in South Africa head on!!!

Irene Charnley is President of the International Women’s Forum South Africa a global organisation of over 7 000 pre-eminent women of significant and diverse achievement across 36 nations and 6 continents.

First published in News24 – 25 Feb 2021.