The HERrespect intervention to address violence against female garment workers in Bangladesh: study protocol for a quasi-experimental trial

Abstract

BackgroundWomen in Bangladesh experience high rates of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV). IPV is more prevalent against income earning women compared to their non-earning counterparts, and Workplace Violence (WPV) is also common. Such violence is a violation of women’s rights, and also constrains them from contributing to their personal growth, household, community and the economy at large. There is limited evidence on what works to prevent IPV and WPV amongst garment workers. This paper describes an evaluation of HERrespect, an intervention which aims to reduce IPV and WPV against female garment workers in and around Dhaka, Bangladesh.MethodsThe trial employs a quasi-experimental design, with four intervention and four control factories. In the intervention factories a randomly selected cohort of married female line workers, a cohort of male line workers, and all middle management staff received the intervention. The intervention strategies involved (1) gender transformative group-based training for workers and management staff; (2) joint session between workers (15 female and male) and middle-management staff; (3) factory-wide activities; (4) awareness raising among top management; (5) factory policy review and development and 6) a community based campaign. For the evaluation, a cohort of randomly selected female workers and a cohort of selected management staff have been established. All workers (n = 800) and management staff (n = 395) from these cohorts were interviewed at baseline using two different questionnaires, and will be interviewed in the endline, 24 months post-baseline. Intention to treat analysis will be used for assessing the impact of HERrespect, comparing the intervention and control factories.DiscussionTo our knowledge this is the first study that seeks to evaluate the impact on IPV and WPV, of group sessions with female workers, male workers, and management; factory-wide campaigns and a community intervention among female garment workers in Bangladesh. Apart from informing programmers and policy makers about intervention effectiveness in reducing IPV and WPV against female garment workers this study will also present evidence on an intervention tailored to the situation in the garment sector, which makes HERrespect scalable.Trial registrationClinicalTrials.gov NCT03304015, retrospectively registered on October 06, 2017.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s12889-018-5442-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Intersectional community correlates of married women’s experiences of male intimate partner physical violence in Bangladesh: a cross-sectional study

“…One such intervention might be generating normative empowerment ,39 leading the community to view women’s empowerment as normal and promoting bystander intervention when violence occurs. Creating a women empowerment friendly environment (eg, HERrespect project for garments workers in Bangladesh),41 increasing earning opportunities for women and men42 and working with men and women to reduce harmful masculinity harnessing positive masculinities (eg, Stepping Stones and Creating Futures projects in South Africa42) might be effective. Therefore, communities need not only achieve gender equality in employment and education, but also create women empowerment friendly environment.…”

Magnitude and correlates of intimate partner violence against female garment workers from selected factories in Bangladesh

“…This paper is focused on intimate partner violence against female garment workers, and hence used only the worker survey data. Details of the study design are presented elsewhere [ 35 ].…”

“…All the interviews were conducted in private in a non-judgemental manner. Details of the ethical considerations have been described elsewhere [ 35 ].…”

The pathways between female garment workers’ experience of violence and development of depressive symptoms

“…Thus, it is also important to work with men, to address gender norms as it is linked with controlling behaviour and IPV. Successful workplace based intervention to promote gender equity and address gender based violence [ 31 , 55 ] may be tested and replicated form other places. Mental health services must be an integral part of interventions to address IPV and WPV.…”

“…This study uses baseline (cross-sectional) data of the HERrespect trial, an evaluation of an intervention aiming to reduce IPV and WPV against female garment workers in Bangladesh. The details of the methodology are described elsewhere [ 31 ]. Briefly, the HERrespect trial employs a quasi-experimental design, involving four intervention and four control factories in and around Dhaka city.…”