Speaking Out

Liberia’s Working Women Plagued by Sexual Assault and Harassment

Vera was working for an NGO when a supervisor made sexual advances while the two were in his office. She remembers worrying she would not be strong enough to push him away.

“He asked me to stand up and said ‘Kiss me’. I said no, then I tried to get up. He pulled me to him and tried to lift up my blouse,“ Vera says. “I remember pulling my blouse down and I remember physical strength from him,” she says.

Years later, sitting at a desk at her own small, private clinic, Vera, now in her 30s, says her boss’s behavior shocked her at the time. “I got real mad and I just left the office. When I went home I was so mad I didn’t even want to come back to work. I sat down and I said this thing is exploitation,” Vera says.

Nevertheless, she didn’t report the supervisor. She had already been harassed by two other male colleagues.  “It happened in a way there was nobody to report to,” Vera says.

Sexual harassment in the workplace in Liberia is so common most women don’t bother reporting it according to the many working women FrontPage Africa interviewed for this story. Although it violates Liberian laws very few cases are ever brought for prosecution. But sexual harassment has a devastating impact on the women who are victims, making their working lives a living hell.

The victims’ names in this story have been changed because they are afraid of reprisals.

Kumba, a senior level executive at a media company in downtown Monrovia, says she has been harassed many times in her career. Because of her current high level position she says, men of all levels, including ministers, routinely expect her to have sex with them.

Clients have routinely asked Kumba to have sex with them in order to seal advertising deals. She says she has learned to tell clients in clear terms that she is not interested. “I don’t want you to put me on your menu, I want you to look at the proposal that is in front of you to view and deal with it,” she says.

Kumba believes qualification for the job should be the most important bargaining chip.  “It’s always like what you get is going to be based on what you’re going to be delivering and I was like, ‘No, I’m not on the menu so how you’re going to do that?” she said.

Amazingly not all the harassment has been by men. Last year Kumba received sexually explicit text messages from two people she later discovered were female employees. Kumba says sexual harassment is so ingrained as a way to attack women in the workplace even disgruntled women use the tactic.

Kumba let the women know she knew what they had done but did not dismiss them. She says she preferred to have them stay on and hopefully learn a lesson from that.

But not every woman is able to take Kumba’s tough position. Many women FrontPage spoke with had to endure the harassment at great personal suffering.

Vera says after she warned the man who harassed her but had to continued working with the organization. As soon as she could get the finances together she left to set up her own clinic.

In Liberia there are no laws prohibiting sexual harassment but there is currently a draft Ministry of Labor-sponsored Decent Work Bill before the national legislature that would outlaw harassment at work. In many countries, including the United States and most of Europe, harassment is immediate grounds for termination. The first sex harassment case in the US was brought in 1974 by a woman who said a manager at the bank where she worked demanded sexual favors in exchange for a promotion. Since then lawmakers and business owners have gone to great lengths to stamp harassment out, believing harassment prevents women being as productive as they could be. Harassment is rarely tolerated in American workplaces.

The Liberian legislature is considering the bill as a way to comply with standards of the United Nations’ International Labor Organization. The ILO defines sex harassment as a prohibited form of sex discrimination.

A highly publicized sexual harassment case two years ago put the issue at the center of public debate. Mrs. Ruth Yeaher, an employee of the General Auditing Commission, alleged that her boss, the former Auditor General John Morlu, made sexual advances in text messages and phone calls throughout the course of the three years they worked together.

She claimed her indefinite suspension by the Auditor General was due to her refusal to give in to his romantic requests.

Yeaher’s case was thrown out of court because of a lack of evidence. She was later slammed with a $1.5 million defamation lawsuit by Morlu, but the trial of the case was never concluded.

The Yeaher case scared many women who have been harassed from reporting it, according to Counselor Deweh Gray, a commissioner in the Law Reform Commission, a body established by the Accra peace accords in 2003 to promote good governance.

“A lot of times because of the stigma associated with it people tend to shy away from it. Some might decide to live with it in silence,” Gray says. “People still don't feel protected enough to want to start to open a Pandora's Box.”

Gray believes the passage of the Decent Work Bill might encourage more women to come forward.

“Once it comes out, and the provisions are there, people have to test the system,” she says. “People who feel violated can come forth and test the system to see if the system works.”

But women like Kumba say the bill will do little to help them. They say it will take a long time for people’s attitudes to change. Until then they just have to endure harassment. She believes the best defense is total rejection.

“I think if more women said no, I don’t care what you’re offering me. I’m not going to compromise my integrity to say the least, then maybe they will realize that it is not working,” she says.

BEATING - ‘THE ONLY PUNISHMENT FOR OUR WOMEN IN AFRICA’

Mae Azango, FPA STAFF WRITER Monrovia

Nelson Dweh sits on his neighbour’s porch out of the glare of the sun.  It is mid afternoon and the 59 year old is taking a break with his friend, David Walabo.  They are talking about their past experiences with women.  When asked whether he ever beat his wife, without hesitation the old man says, “Yes, I did it many times.”

Dweh and Walabo’s views on domestic violence are not unusual in Liberia.  Mr Dweh goes on to explain why he thinks there is nothing wrong with beating a woman.  “The women these days have a problem when you do not have a job.  The woman does not respect you and if she does not respect you, the only punishment for our women in Africa is beating,” he says.

Last year in Liberia, the number of reported cases of domestic violence were the second highest gender based violence after rape.  But the Ministry of Gender and Development along with NGOs believe the actual numbers are much higher.  The problem is, they say, women just aren’t reporting it.  Men, who are often the head of the home and also the bread winners, have traditionally had the power over women.  In our Liberian setting, men often take charge and feel they have authority in the home over their wives and children.  People turn a blind eye to what happens to some women who are beaten by their husbands or partners in the community.
Edith Kudah, the Gender coordinator for Ministry of Gender in Grand Gedeh explains what many rural women go through at the hands of their husbands. "Mostly in our rural setting, after the woman finishes the farming work and when they coming to town, the woman would have a bundle of wood on her head with a baby on her back and maybe a pregnancy, while her husband will only have his cutlass in his hand walking behind the woman,” she says.  “When they get home, she would go fetch water, make fire and put the water on to get hot for her husband to bathe.  Thereafter she starts to beat rice to prepare meal for her husband and children, while he lies in a hammock and relaxes,” says Ms Kudah as she gets more and more angry as the story goes on.  She continues,

 “It won't stop there.  When the water is hot, the woman would leave everything else and empty the water to take to the bathroom. She would also carry the soap dish while the man only walks behind her to the bathroom, and when he finishes, he leaves the bucket and soap dish in the bathroom for the woman to go for, while he only walks out to get dressed and wait for his hot meal.”  She concludes by saying, “After doing all these work, and the woman complains of being tired when her husband wants her in bed, he beats her and accuses her of having an affairs outside."  
                                                 
Ms Kudah also says children learn from their parents.  The dangers of domestic violence affect the children when they grow up.  She says if a boy sees his father beating his mother, the chances are he will follow in his father's footsteps and do the same to his wife when he grows up.

On the other side of Zwedru on a hill top, students happily pour out of the Multilateral High at the end of the day.  The whole campus looks colourful as the children, wearing pink tops and maroon bottoms, make their way home.  One student, 20 year old Victor Jarbo, explains how he watched his mother get beaten by his father on a regular basis.  Although he says he will never do the same to his future wife, he admits his mother deserved the beating.  When asked why it happened, he says, “She did not cook on time, so my father beat her."  He admitted that his father would beat his mother on her back, rather than on her face where it would be seen.  The bruises were hidden under her clothes, away from the community.  "I did not feel bad when my father beat my mother because she looked for it,” he goes on to say.

The shocking thing about Victor’s comments is that he is among the next generation of Liberia.  To have young men believing it is OK to beat a woman if she doesn’t cook the dinner on time is a worry for women’s groups all over the country.

Domestic violence is a big problem in Liberia according Ashia Kamara from Action aid in Zwedru, Grand Gedeh County.   She says tackling it should start from the community and county levels before going to the national level.  “It Is like in almost every home in Liberia, you would find out that either a woman or a girl is suffering from violence.  One way or another they have suffered violence in the hands of those that should be protecting them.”

But things are slowly starting to change in Liberia, according to Ms Kudah.  She says more women are starting to know their rights and are beginning to speak out for themselves.  The government of Liberia, in partnership with international partners, is spreading awareness of domestic violence throughout the country.  They have been conducting workshops and seminars to try and educate both men and women about gender equity. 

But while there are young men like Victor who think women sometimes deserve to be beaten, there are many others with much more modern views.  23 year old Augustine Dweh is in the same class as Victor, but has a completely different view on the subject of domestic violence.
"I never saw my father beat my mother,” he says.  “So I don't deem it necessary to beat my girlfriend. I would take it to be wrong if a man beats his wife"

But back on the porch with Neslon Dweh and David Walabo, the two old men continue to talk.  Mr Walabo, in his early seventies, laughs as he too admits to beating his wife. "According to our tradition, our older people believe that if you beat a woman, she will change,” he says.  “I beat my wife because she made me vexed.  She did not wake my children up early to get them ready for school on time.”  The two men giggle together, like children, as Mr Dweh goes on to say, “Let me tell you something funny.  When a husband really tortures his wife, she kills a chicken for him the next day as though he had done [something good for her]."

This is the second of a three part series on domestic violence, written by Mae Azango.  Today’s feature looked at domestic violence through the eyes of a man.  Tomorrow’s will look at domestic violence through the eyes of a woman.