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Study reveals terrible toll of domestic violence on women workers
Women’s rights group Perempuan Mahardika conducted a survey of 26 women workers who faced abuse at home.
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“When we talk about the safety of women workers, we tend to focus on their workplace, be it in factories or offices,” Perempuan Mahardika research coordinator Vivi Widyawati said. “We rarely think about their homes, as it is considered a private domain.” (Shutterstock/-)
S
ari, a 32-year-old garment factory worker, relies on over-the-counter painkillers just to get through the day. Her problem is not in the workplace, it’s at home, with her abusive husband.
Sari, who lives in Jakarta, said her work was affected whenever she had a scuffle with him.
“I cry and cannot sleep after a rough fight. I get awful headaches and arrive at work tired,” she said. “I need to take a higher dose of medicine just to be able to finish my work.”
Sari’s story appears in a report published by women’s rights group Perempuan Mahardika, which conducted a study on 26 women workers who faced abuse at home. Other women in the study have been driven to even greater extremes than reliance on medication, including attempted suicide.
All have experienced domestic abuse — physical, psychological and emotional — for years, and some still endure it to this day.
“When we talk about the safety of women workers, we tend to focus on their workplace, be it in factories or offices,” research coordinator Vivi Widyawati said on Thursday. “We rarely think about their homes, as it is considered a private domain.”
The study found that physical abuse affected the women’s work performance, including arriving late, suffering from fatigue and becoming less productivity. Moreover, those who suffered psychological abuse found it hard to concentrate, causing them to make mistakes or leading to workplace accidents, while those who were emotionally abused could have emotional breakdowns at work and not want to return home.
