During a 2020 field trip to a rural area in Vietnam, Hoa (not her real name), then working for a nonprofit focused on environmental conservation, visited local authorities to discuss forest management. Vietnamese law requires local authorities to approve foreign-funded projects, so this type of informal meeting is crucial to the success of the project.
Hua was accompanied by three male colleagues, but during the event, she recalls, she was chosen to toast with the village chief. He put his arm around her shoulder, which she said made her feel uncomfortable. Despite her annoyance, she had to hide her annoyance and drink with him.
To her dismay, Hua noticed that he behaved similarly towards his other female classmates from the area, who seemed accustomed to such behavior. None of her colleagues offered to drink on her behalf, which is often a gesture of support for female colleagues in such situations.
Later, her three male classmates, who were decades older than her, made her feel even more uncomfortable. She remembers scary moments when she was showering in a rickety outdoor bathroom, while they were making jokes outside. Some of the jokes included comments such as: “Do you feel lonely while showering alone?”
“It's disgusting just to remember the incident,” Hua says.
Hoa's visit took place in the same year that a law was introduced making sexual harassment in the workplace illegal in Vietnam. But Hua remained silent, thinking that her workplace would not care about this issue.
Conservation workers from across Southeast Asia echo Hua's sentiments. Despite existing anti-sexual harassment laws that recognize victims' rights to seek redress, law enforcement is still far from effective on the ground. Women in the male-dominated conservation sector say they often remain silent in order to continue working. Limited awareness of this issue contributes to the persistence of sexual harassment.
“I didn't know I was on the receiving end of sexual harassment until later…”
Once back at her office in Hanoi, Hoa confided in several of her colleagues about the incident, but they seemed indifferent, she says.
“They told me that male colleagues do not have any bad intentions, and that it is normal for colleagues to tease each other,” Hua says. “They told me to just focus on my job.”
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The reason could be the cultural conditioning of not speaking up in an environment where there is no psychological safety. Asian work setting [tends] Being more hierarchical than egalitarian and where patriarchy prevails.
Asma Abdullah, Researcher, National University of Malaysia
Hua now works for an international company, where there is clear guidance, training and a reporting mechanism in case of sexual harassment. Her previous workplace still doesn't have any of those.
Bianca (not her real name) works closely with indigenous communities in the Philippines. Although the Anti-Sexual Harassment Law was passed in 1995, she says she is often subjected to unwanted sexual jokes. These can come up in the middle of training or serious discussions at work, as well as in informal roundtables with male participants, she says.
“Suddenly, someone would ask me why I was single, and then they would try to pair me with one man in the local communities,” says Bianca, who is in her mid-30s. “I'm embarrassed. Single guys don't get this question.
“The most challenging thing is when you are a workshop leader. In front of the community leaders, you have to find a way not to violate their dignity while maintaining your own dignity,” she says.
Bianca says she has also observed inappropriate behavior toward her female colleagues, who she says do not necessarily associate such behavior with sexual harassment.
“I grew up in an environment where I understood that some physical touches were wrong. The males in my family respected my boundaries,” Bianca says. “But others might grow up in different environments.”
Bianca says she tries not to impose meaning on those behaviors by reporting perpetrators or telling colleagues she thinks they're being harassed. But she says she pays attention and makes sure these women are not left alone with the perpetrators.
She says that when she mentors women, she tries to come up with a simple definition of harassment: any act that makes a person feel uncomfortable because of their gender or sexuality, especially women or members of LGBTQ+ communities.
“Sometimes we can't prove sexual harassment, but we can feel uncomfortable,” Bianca says. “For example, when we shake hands with male partners, the way some do it may make you very uncomfortable. You may feel goosebumps. In this case, you should not be alone with the person. I advise women not to second-guess themselves.”
Lack of awareness is common even among highly educated women. After working in government in Malaysia, Ruvia (not her real name) moved to the non-profit sector in her 40s. There, her workplace was predominantly female and she received numerous trainings, including those related to sexual harassment. She says it was only then that she realized that she had been sexually harassed several times in her previous job, whether as a junior employee or as a senior manager.
“I experienced sexual harassment from the beginning to the end of my career in government, from rank-and-file employees to senior management,” says Ruvia.
Ruvia remembers being at the office around 2005 when her boss, an older, married man with children, sent her a phone message instructing her to check the email he had just sent.
It turned out to be a pornographic video.
Ruvia says she pretended nothing happened, and then nothing happened. “I still have to work with this man on a daily basis,” she says.
Importantly, given her lack of training, Rofia did not at that time identify her behavior as sexual harassment. “I didn’t know I was on the receiving end of sexual harassment until later.”
Silence is the rule
Even when harassment is clearly defined, speaking out against harassers is not only difficult, but sometimes impractical or even impossible.
Bianca says women have become so accustomed to sexual innuendo that they sometimes laugh at those jokes. However, she says this type of coping mechanism comes “at the expense of women's self-esteem.” Single women and young women are particularly at risk.
“Nobody is talking, including me,” she says. “We have to choose our own battles. We don't always have the energy and mental space to deal with that.
In her field of work, most community leaders are men. Choosing to confront harassers means not submitting to them.
“Respect for them is essential, and if not, I wouldn’t be able to come back and work with them,” says Bianca.
Concern about causing stress in the organization is also a common concern.
“The NGO circle is very small. Reporting and complaining would give others the impression that I am a difficult person to work with,” Hua says.
Despite everything that happened, Rofia says she doesn't hold a grudge and hasn't let any incidents spoil her professional relationships, let alone those with upper management.
“Culturally, it seems like there's no problem for men to be quite suggestive,” she says.
The Anti-Sexual Harassment Act 2022 in Malaysia fails to hold employers accountable for the on-the-job behavior of their employees or clients. Furthermore, there is no prohibition on retaliation directed at a complainant or whistleblower.
“Reporting this could cause tensions in the organization,” says Ruvia.
Asma Abdullah, an intercultural specialist in Kuala Lumpur who has researched speaking out in the Asian corporate context, says that while society imposes expectations that victims of sexual harassment be brave enough to speak out, many victims feel reluctant to do so for a variety of reasons. . one of the reasons.
“It could be the cultural conditioning of not speaking up in an environment where there is no psychological safety. Asian Work Setting [tends] “To be more hierarchical than egalitarian and where patriarchy prevails,” Abdullah says.
Although Indonesian law provides a legal basis for classifying the act as sexual harassment, the reporting process is still fraught with challenges, says Arimbi Hirupoitri, a Jakarta-based lawyer with experience working with women's and environmental issues.
“If the victims report the incident to the police, the immediate response from the police is to reconcile the perpetrators and the victims,” she says.
Members of LGBTQ+ communities are particularly reluctant to report incidents of sexual harassment, says Kuros (not his real name), an environmental advocate in Brunei.
“We may have already been placed in a marginalized community and have a bad reputation as ‘sexual deviants,’” Koros says. “We don’t want to expose some of our communities, otherwise we validate the false claim about LGBTQIA. That would put us on the sidelines even more.”
Male mentors and allies are needed
In the absence of effective enforcement of official measures against harassment, conservationists say they must develop their own strategies.
Rofia recommends reporting it if sexual harassment is ongoing, but ignoring it until then.
“It's about how you react. The ball is in your court. They're just pushing the limits to see how far they can go. But I'm firm and clear about my limits,” she says.
Bianca says she advises her female colleagues to mentally prepare themselves for the risks of sexual harassment, while reminding them that it is not their fault and that sexual harassment is not determined by what they wear or how they act. In her work, she says, she often seeks to befriend the wives of community leaders so that “they consider me one of our own.”
“I make sure I'm not the only woman in the group when I meet male community leaders,” Bianca says.
However, she admits this fails to address the root of the problem. “I would ask myself: Why should we put the burden on women to protect themselves?” Says.
Women-to-women mentorship in the conservation sector is crucial, says Shehrazad, co-founder of PROGRES, an NGO working on neglected species based on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi.
“Empowered women’s mentoring networks can collectively advocate for improved safety and protection for women in the field, and hold organizations/perpetrators accountable,” says Shehrazad, who is currently studying for her PhD. in Environmental Science and Policy at the University of California, Berkeley.
However, Shehrazad says that mentoring alone is not a silver bullet, because the problem is systemic and rooted in a deeply patriarchal society and lack of representation in the sector. She says male colleagues, especially those in positions of authority, can advance by creating formal and informal social norms that hold other men accountable.
Abdullah, a cross-cultural specialist, agrees that women should not be left to face these challenges alone. “I believe that women’s issues should be addressed in a context that includes men,” she says. “Women can only be empowered if there are university-abled men who can speak on their behalf first.”
Shehrazad agrees that sexual harassment is not a problem that should be addressed by women alone, but it is not a problem that can be solved by men playing the role of “saviors of women,” she says. It's teamwork, she says: “It requires transformative change in the conservation sectors.”
She says this means donors have a responsibility to ensure that the organizations they support have safeguarding policies in place and provide training to all their staff and partners to “collectively create a safe and inclusive environment at work”.
This story is published with permission from Mongabay.com.
