Under a new partnership with UN Women, Unilever is supporting over 1,000 smallholder farmers and raising awareness among its 6,000 employees in Tanzania.
Dusty winding roads circle mist-shrouded mountains, and mighty rivers snake towards Unilever Tea Tanzania’s five plantations and three factories in the Mufindi district of Iringa region. The tea produced here is highly acclaimed for its taste and quality. It has also created decent jobs for local communities, including women, and fostered sustainable development.
Unilever is one of the largest private-sector employers in Iringa and Njombe regions, providing jobs for more than 6,000 people. Nearly half of its managers include locally recruited women.
However, a set of independent assessments conducted of the communities in Mufindi and Njombe between 2013 and 2019 revealed that women are particularly vulnerable to physical, sexual and other forms of violence, and lacked confidence and say in household decision-making. The assessments spurred Unilever to establish a programme in 2014 to ensure that female staff are safe—both at home and as they travel to and from work.
The UN Women and Unilever Tea Tanzania partnership was launched in December 2019 in Mufindi to run a series of gender-based violence training sessions and awareness-raising activities targeting the workers and their families. It aims to transform perceptions and attitudes so that the existing policies on sexual harassment and child protection can be meaningfully implemented.
This year, the partnership will strengthen Unilever’s Women Safety Initiative, which is paying closer attention to prevention and response to sexual harassment and other forms of gender-based violence in all Unilever tea estates and factories. A total of 1,000 women smallholder farmers from surrounding areas will benefit from the Women Safety initiative.
UN Women Representative, Hodan Addou says the essence of the programme is to ensure that women and girls enjoy their right to live in an environment free of all forms of violence.
In Tanzania, an estimated 40 percent of women aged 15–49 have experienced physical violence while 17 percent are survivors of sexual violence, according to Tanzania’s 2015–2016 Demographic and Health Survey.
Original source: UN Women
Published on 31 January 2020