merelygifted:

Female factory workers producing clothing and shoes in Vietnam – many probably for major US and European brands – face systemic sexual harassment and violence at work, the Observer can reveal.

Nearly half (43.1%) of 763 women interviewed in factories in three Vietnamese provinces said they had suffered at least one form of violence and/or harassment in the previous year, according to a study by the Fair Wear Foundation and Care International out on Monday.

The abuse – which ranged from groping and slapping to rape and threats of contract termination – sheds a light on working conditions endured by women in some Vietnamese factories with as many as 20,000 employees, said Dr Jane Pillinger, a gender-based violence expert and author of the study.

“I am shocked that nearly 50% of the women interviewed had experienced some form of violence in the past year, and I’ve been working on this issue for 30 years,” she said. “There’s a significant culture of silence around this, and as a result the numbers are probably even higher: we know from feedback that some women wouldn’t answer the questions in the interviews, perhaps because they feared their responses would somehow get back to their employers or husbands.”  …