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What does workplace sexual harassment do to a victim’s career?

This op-ed was originally published in the Business Times on December 17 2021.

MELISSA* (name changed to protect her identity) had just started work as a senior manager at a multinational corporation (MNC) when she began to be harassed by the chief executive officer (CEO) of the company. The CEO started texting her on a daily basis, which Melissa found odd, because she did not report to him directly. These texts would sometimes include inappropriate comments about other female staff. She chose to ignore these texts and focus on her work, wanting to make a good impression. Over time, however, the daily texting escalated to physical harassment at her cubicle.

After continuing to decline the CEO’s advances, Melissa was informed that she would be let go. Although she was never clearly provided a work-related reason for her dismissal, she suspects her experience of harassment – something she never asked for, and coped with as best she could – had something to do with it.

Melissa’s experience is similar to that of many women who have experienced work place sexual harassment in the past 5 years. A new qualitative study by the Association of Women for Action and Research (Aware) – “I Quit”: Career and Financial Effects of Workplace Sexual Harassment on Women in Singapore, based on in-depth interviews with 39 victims of workplace sexual harassment – shines for the first time a spotlight on both the short- and long-term career and financial impacts of such harassment. The respondents were drawn from different industries, worked in MNCs, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and as self-employed workers. They also represented a wide range of work experience, from the extremely accomplished to those who were just starting out in their careers.

Decreases work productivity

Out of 39 respondents to “I Quit”, 34 reported decreased work productivity: After experiencing sexual harassment, they were unable to perform work tasks as efficiently as before. Their ability to perform at work was hampered by various needs: to protect themselves from further harassment, to find support for emotional and psychological trauma, and in some cases, to show up to work despite safety and health concerns because they couldn’t afford not to.

Some survivors of sexual harassment use leave as part of their coping strategies. They may try to protect themselves from further harassment by taking leave and thus avoiding their harassers. They also take leave to cope with the emotional and psychological trauma of sexual harassment, although this can lead to them lagging behind on deadlines, missing import ant meetings, and struggling with the large piles of work that accumulate during their absences.

Other survivors show up to work be cause they cannot afford to take time off. This “presenteeism” – or, the act of coming to work despite illness, injury or anxiety – is particularly pronounced for those in vulnerable financial situations.

Returning to work can put them in close proximity to their harassers, which is unsurprisingly detrimental to their well being. The resultant feelings of stress and anxiety can then implicate their ability to concentrate at work, diminishing their productivity, and consequently their job satisfaction.

Research respondents reported experiencing a few other short-term impacts too: Thirty respondents found that their relationships with colleagues had deteriorated, either because the colleagues did not believe the victims had experienced sexual harassment, or because they closed ranks around the harassers, who may have been more senior or more popular at the office.

Pushes victims out of jobs

When ignored, the short-term effects of workplace sexual harassment can push victims to leave their jobs and/or industries, either through their own volition or be cause they are fired. This is borne out by both the qualitative research in “I Quit”, and also a national survey of 1,000 respondents conducted earlier this year by Aware and market research company Ipsos. Of the survey respondents who did not report their experiences of workplace sexual harassment, 16 per cent of women and 9 per cent of men quit their jobs. Quitting was not a spur-of-the-moment decision for respondents, even when the decision to quit was made fairly soon after experiencing sexual harassment. For some, harassment was the main reason they resigned; for others it was a combination of not only harassment, but also negative reporting experiences and/or sub sequent retaliation that precipitated their decisions to quit. Regardless of the reason, all respondents reported being riddled with stress and trauma while deciding how best to protect themselves from harassment and continuing with their jobs and careers.

We frequently – and erroneously – presume that victims, in removing themselves from the site of harassment, put an end to the harassment and the attendant emotional and psychological trauma. This, we imagine, allows them space to refocus on their jobs and careers. However, the experience of workplace sexual harassment and the manner in which victims are treated in its aftermath actually have knock-on effects on their subsequent career-related decision-making processes.

Forces a change in career paths

In deciding their career trajectories, 1 in 4 of our respondents decided to change industries after workplace sexual harassment. Many of them believed that they were no longer “cut out” for a certain field or type of job, opting instead to take up lower-paying jobs that they believed did not carry the same risk of abuse – for example, female-dominated jobs such as childcare. Others were forced to change industries because they did not want to risk running into their harassers, or because their harassers had retaliated against them by undermining their professional reputation in their sectors, forcing them to look for employment elsewhere.

Starting in a new industry, though, is not exactly for the faint of heart. For one, respondents found themselves starting at entry-level, and thus lower-paying, positions. And this loss of seniority and standing – and associated pay and promotions – is particularly troublesome for women’s economic prospects, because it may negatively impact their earnings and promotion opportunities later in their careers.

There is also the pesky problem of having to explain short stints and/or long breaks in a resume because of workplace sexual harassment. Some of our respondents were hesitant to disclose previous experiences of sexual harassment to subsequent employers, fearing that they would be blamed for having somehow “invited” the harassment upon themselves, or perceived as overly sensitive – a common refrain of those who prefer to dismiss sexual harassment as “harmless fun”.

Early intervention in the form of work place trainings on sexual harassment, sensitive handling of harassment reports, and protection from retaliation are all steps that can minimise the career and financial impacts of workplace sexual harassment. Unfortunately, many companies continue to labour under the misconception that workplace sexual harassment is merely an interpersonal problem, to be worked out between colleagues.

The government should introduce legislation that clarifies the obligations employers have to provide a safe working environment. No one should have to put up with harassment in order to earn a living.

Shailey Hingorani, Head of Research and Advocacy, AWARE

Broaden family violence definition to explicitly include coercive control

This was originally published to The Straits Times on December 9 2021. 

The Association of Women for Action and Research (Aware) agrees with Care Corner Singapore chief service officer Agnes Chia that it is important to recognise coercive control behaviours that are designed to restrict a person’s life, and to belittle her while making her dependent on the abuser (Watch out for coercive control violence too, Dec 2).

Coercive control refers to a pattern of controlling behaviour: threats, humiliation, intimidation and other demands used to establish power over victims.

As mentioned by Ms Chia, current legislation, while broadly covering coercive control, does not fully address situations involving coercive control that appear harmless on the surface.

This kind of behaviour operates in a much subtler manner that goes beyond explicit threats of harm, derogatory comments, shouting and other actions that would prompt neighbours to call the police.

Many callers to Aware’s women’s helpline tell us that while they might not consider physical violence to be the most distressing aspect of their abuse, it is what they raise to the authorities to get the protection they need.

While controlling behaviours and other forms of non-physical abuse are more pervasive, these callers find them harder to prove.

However, there is still a lack of public understanding of coercive control. Catalyse, Aware’s corporate advisory, consulting and training arm, has trained 500 workshop participants this year on how to support victims of domestic violence.

Based on the feedback received, a big revelation for participants is the idea that family violence covers not only physical threats and harm, but also power and control exerted over another person to dominate her.

We are glad that social workers and counsellors are trained to identify signs of abuse, including coercive control, and that the Taskforce on Family Violence plans to educate the police and the public on it.

We urge the Government to go further and consider broadening the definition of family violence to explicitly include coercive control as an additional category of family violence.

Since the task force recognises the importance of identifying coercive control and plans to cover the concept in its training programmes, the law should also be revised to include its definition and to extend legal protection to victims.

We believe that a legislative update, together with educational programmes, will go a long way to help Singapore tackle all forms of family violence, including the subtler form of coercive control.

Lee Yoke Mun, Projects Executive, AWARE

Ahead of Deepavali, AWARE launches Kickstarter campaign to raise $20,000 for Growing Up Indian, an anthology giving voice to Indian women in Singapore

This post was originally published as a press release on 28 October 2021.

28 October 2021 – To close a year marked by both shocking racist incidents and community resilience in the face of the pandemic, gender-equality group AWARE today launched a Kickstarter campaign for a new anthology of stories at the intersection of gender and the Indian experience in Singapore.

Titled Growing Up Indian, this book will be edited by AWARE’s Shailey Hingorani and A. Preethi Devi, and published in Q3 2022 by Ethos Books, who also published AWARE’s 2018 collection Growing Up Perempuan (focusing on the Muslim women experience). With the campaign, AWARE hopes to raise $20,000 to fund the production of the book for a 500-copy initial print run. The campaign will run for two months, ending on 27 December 2021; as per Kickstarter’s all-or-nothing funding model, the full goal will need to be reached for donations to be processed.

The anthology, consisting 30 personal essays and poems curated by AWARE from a pool of submissions from the public, will also feature original writing from an array of familiar names: Balli Kaur Jaswal, Akshita Nanda, Sharul Channa, Anita Kapoor, Devika Panicker, Grace Kalaiselvi, as well as former AWARE president Constance Singam. The (mostly female) contributors will celebrate and dissect the Indian experience, touching on as diverse and complex themes as language, immigration, belonging and otherness, stereotypes and taboos, myths, cultural rituals, pop culture, celebrations and festivals. 

“Growing Up Indian is a perfect embodiment of AWARE’s intersectional feminist approach,” said Shailey Hingorani, AWARE’s Head of Research and Advocacy. “The rise in racist and xenophobic behaviour that occurred this year alongside the spread of the Delta variant distressed us deeply. As such, we wanted to create a platform that foregrounds the lived experiences of Indian women, who are marginalised doubly in Singapore for their gender and their race. At the same time, we hope to remind readers of the joys of ‘growing up Indian’—which is an experience not solely of oppression, but of joy and camaraderie.”

“There are many untold stories about the challenges and joys of being Indian in Singapore,” said author Balli Kaur Jaswal (Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows). “Growing Up Indian will amplify the voices of emerging writers and explore a range of subjects that speak to our multifaceted experiences and identities.”

“To be ‘Indian’ in Singapore is to have an identity outlined by state and social norms,” said author Akshita Nanda (Beauty Queens of Bishan), “but our personal identities can’t be that easily summarised. We have so many tales to share: stories of heartbreak, humour, resilience and breaking boundaries.”

“Growing up as a brown woman in Singapore, I constantly felt an unspoken pressure to be apologetic for the space I took up,” said actress and model Devika Panicker. “It is about time we acknowledge the experiences of the countless Indian powerhouses in Singapore, and celebrate taking up space in a society that constantly tries to dim our light.”

With donation tiers ranging from $20 to $200, Kickstarter backers will receive at least one copy of Growing Up Indian before it goes on sale. Other perks include being listed on a special acknowledgements section of AWARE’s website, and invited to the book’s launch party in 2022.

AWARE is in the process of collecting essays and poems for the collection, with submissions closing on 14 December 2021. To assist aspiring contributors, AWARE is also conducting a free ideation workshop on 13 November 2021, led by Balli Kaur Jaswal, who will guide participants on refining their essay pitches before submission.

Beyond the anthology collection, the Growing Up Indian project will include an interactive website, a new play by Sharul Channa and a workshop series on interviewing and documentary, creative writing and cross-cultural understanding.

“Deepavali is traditionally a time of reminiscence and reunion,” said AWARE’s Ms. Hingorani. “It’s an occasion to reflect on our identities, histories and heritage—the differences that make us unique and the common bonds that unite us. We hope that whether you are a donor, contributor or reader, Growing Up Indian will be a catalyst for that.”

Sleeping women can’t consent to sexual activity

This op-ed was originally published in Channel NewsAsia on October 26 2021

SINGAPORE: A fog of confusion hovers over sexual consent and what it really looks like.

In no other sexual assault case in recent history has this been more obvious than the case involving Singapore Management University (SMU) student Lee Yan Ru, who was sentenced on Monday (25 Oct) to 10 months’ jail and three strokes of the cane for molesting a woman during an overnight study session in 2019.

The question of consent was central, since the perpetrator admitted to making repeated physical advances towards the victim – ultimately rubbing his genitalia on the victim’s sleeping form and ejaculating on her face, neck and hair – without asking her for consent.

The perpetrator claimed she was “fine” with his advances. He also earlier testified that when the victim said “stop” – woken up by a feeling of heaviness on her body – he interpreted it as “carry on”, and that context mattered in evaluating what “stop” meant.

Even if we write off the defence’s arguments as last-ditch attempts to escape punishment, they are disturbingly echoed in many social media comments made since the judgment was announced.

This confusion over consent worries many women’s rights activists, because acts of sexual violence are defined primarily by a lack of consent.

Yet while most people would agree, in theory, on the basic principle that “no means no”, the perpetrator’s testimony and the comments on social media show an incomplete understanding of how even an expressed “no” plays out in reality.

Worse, in this case, the woman was unable to consent because – as the judge noted – she was asleep when Lee started performing the sexual act on her.

CONSENT IS SPECIFIC

A common thread that runs between the perpetrator’s testimony and netizens’ comments relates to how the victim’s behaviour earlier in the night was “misleading”.

The perpetrator testified in court that he thought the whole night was “a progressive thing” and that she was “okay with my advances”.

His testimony repeats a common misunderstanding about consent: That consenting to one activity once constitutes consent for other activities, or for the same activity at other times.

Yet consenting to kiss someone doesn’t give them the permission to fondle you. Having sex with someone in the past doesn’t mean consenting to sexual activities in the future.

Consent is an ongoing conversation. Even if the victim in the SMU case had verbally consented to the perpetrator resting his feet on her thighs earlier in the night (which she clarified she hadn’t), that wouldn’t mean he had permission to rub himself on her chest in the morning.

The perpetrator should have sought consent again with each “progressive” physical or sexual activity.

Another aspect of the confusion over consent in this case is what one netizen calls the “signals” the victim was sending: “If she was uncomfortable with his advances, why didn’t she leave?”

When asked this in court, the victim herself cited other reasons, including not wanting to “leave a bad impression” as they had mutual friends, and there being “no mode of transport” available in the middle of the night – nothing to do with her desire to engage in sexual activity.

The bottom line is this: Since it’s impossible to divine what another person is thinking and feeling, it is best to actively ask and communicate feelings of being ready, safe, aroused, desirous and physically responsive before engaging in sexual activity.

“STOP” DOESN’T MEAN CARRY ON

Still, how is it possible for someone to hear “stop” and understand it as “carry on”?

There is the misguided belief that women offer “token resistance” – that they typically say “no” when they really mean “yes” – as part of culturally prescribed scripts for sexual interactions. Indeed, the defence in this case relied heavily on this trope, characterising the victim’s attitude as “coy”.

Researchers call these “sexual scripts” – outdated narratives where men initiate and pursue sex and women are gatekeepers responsible for limiting and saying no.

These scripts assume that men have an uncontrollable desire for sex, something we saw in the SMU case too. The perpetrator wanted “release” in a “moment of lust”  – playing into the male stereotype of an unmanageable libido.

ASKING FOR CONSENT IS NOT UNROMANTIC

Consent creates a safe space and teaches us to respect people’s boundaries. Yet many complain that asking for consent before each specific activity is unromantic. Much better – the argument goes – to read your partner’s mind without having to utter a single word.

Yet there are many ways of phrasing the consent question that do not “kill the mood”. For example, “does this feel nice? Do you like this?”

Some argue that non-verbal affirmations, such as nodding or noises of pleasure – as opposed to passive signals, like silence or lack of resistance – can be taken as consent. But as humans may be neurologically hard-wired to see what we want to see, we should not rely entirely on non-verbal cues.

It’s not that women don’t know how to clearly assert non-consent, which implies that crimes like sexual assault are simply cases of miscommunication. As this SMU case very powerfully shows, even explicit refusals are often ignored or overruled.

Such problems have led some, like the police commissioner of New South Wales in Australia, to suggest the need for an app for couples to establish and record mutual consent before engaging in sex.

Yet critics argue that this approach promotes a contractual understanding of sexual relations. Consent cannot be deduced from an app and it cannot be negotiated ahead of time. It’s about communication in the moment.

A better method might be the acronym used widely by women’s organisations around the world: Consent is as easy as FRIES – it should be Freely given, Reversible, Informed, Enthusiastic and Specific.

Making sure you understand this before engaging in sexual activity is probably easier and way more effective than an app.

AN ACTIVE DEFINITION OF CONSENT

Some jurisdictions have already strengthened consent legislation.

Under its so-called “yes means yes” legislation, Tasmanian law requires the accused to show they did or said something to find out if a person was consenting. Perpetrators cannot rely on the “mistaken, but reasonable belief” defence that consent was provided.

Locally, Singapore’s Penal Code sub-section 90 highlights that consent is not valid under specific circumstances, such as if given by a person who is under fear of injury or wrongful restraint, mentally unsound or incapacitated, intoxicated or under the influence of substances, or otherwise unable to understand the nature and consequence of what they are consenting to.

Would an active definition of consent go further? AWARE’s experiences with sexual assault survivors and interactions with medical practitioners, social workers and the police suggest perhaps a clear, statutory definition of consent, from a public education point of view, is needed.

One possible option is based on case law, referred to in a 2012 case of rape at Sentosa. Although the full definition is too long to reproduce, here’s a paraphrased version for consideration: “Consent is the free, informed and voluntary participation in the sexual activity in question. Lack of resistance and submission to sexual activity, in itself, is not consent as a matter of law.”

Parents and teenagers also suggest including consent as one of the mainstays of sexuality education in schools, so that stereotypical sexual scripts can be debated.

Let’s not keep using the disturbing trope of Prince Charming kissing a sleeping Snow White as a template for real-life sexual interactions.

Shailey Hingorani, Head of Research and Advocacy, AWARE

28 October 2021: Fair Enough? Towards an anti-discrimination law for Singapore

Maybe you received a bad performance appraisal after announcing your pregnancy at work. Or perhaps you were excluded from important meetings or social events at the office after you came out to a close colleague. Maybe you were even turned down from a job because an employer assumed that your disability would affect your productivity, despite your being an excellent candidate for the role.

If the above situations sound familiar, then you’ve probably encountered some kind of workplace discrimination.

Workplace discrimination takes various forms, both overt and subtle, and likely affects a significant population of workers. To address this, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong announced in this year’s National Day Rally speech that new legislation will enshrine the existing guidelines from Tripartite Alliance for Fair and Progressive Employment Practices (TAFEP). Under this law, workers will be protected against discrimination on the basis of age, race, religion, gender and disability.

This long-awaited move has been welcomed by employees, employers and advocates alike. At the same time, critical questions remain: What will this anti-discrimination legislation really look like? (What should it look like?) What material difference will it make to the operations of workplaces across Singapore? And how can we ensure that all groups of vulnerable workers will be adequately protected?

Join AWARE, the Disabled People’s Association (DPA), PinkDot and Blackbox on Thursday, 28 October 2021, for a panel discussion on workplace discrimination in Singapore. This discussion will cover a range of topics, including:

  • Findings from a new Blackbox survey on workplace discrimination in Singapore
  • Common forms of workplace discrimination on the grounds of gender, disability and sexual orientation
  • Discrimination protections available to workers in Singapore

If you’re an employee or human resource professional grappling with the above, attend this panel and weigh in on how best to stamp out workplace discrimination in Singapore.

Date: Thursday, October 28 2021

Time: 4pm – 5:30pm

Venue: Zoom

This event is pay-what-you-can. Suggested donation of $5 per head.

Register here!

About the Speakers

Professor Tommy Koh (moderator)

Tommy Koh is currently Professor of Law at NUS; Ambassador-At-Large at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; the Rector of the Tembusu College at NUS; Chairman of the Governing Board of the Centre for International Law at the National University of Singapore (NUS) and Special Adviser to IPS. He is the Chairman of the International Advisory Panel of the Asia Research Institute (NUS) and Chairman of the Advisory Committee of the Master’s Degree on Environmental Management (NUS). He is also the Co-chairman of the Asian Development Bank’s Advisory Committee on Water and Sanitation, and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the SymAsia Foundation of Credit Suisse.

He has served as Dean of the Faculty of Law of NUS, Singapore’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations in New York, Ambassador to the United States of America, High Commissioner to Canada and Ambassador to Mexico. He was the UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy to Russia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Koh was also President of the Third UN Conference on the Law of the Sea, and the Chairman of the Preparatory Committee for and the Main Committee of the UN Conference on Environment and Development (Earth Summit). Koh was the founding Chairman of the National Arts Council, founding Executive Director of the Asia-Europe Foundation and former Chairman of the National Heritage Board.

Corinna Lim, Executive Director, AWARE

Corinna Lim is the Executive Director of AWARE, the Association of Women for Action and Research. Lim joined AWARE as a member and volunteer in 1992 and has been a women’s rights activist for close to 30 years.

Since becoming Executive Director in 2010, she has been responsible for a range of initiatives including the setting up of the Sexual Assault Care Centre, the only specialised service in Singapore that provides support to sexual assault victims. She also led teams at AWARE to successfully advocate for the enactment of the Protection from Harassment Act, the repeal of marital rape immunity, better access to housing for single parents, gender equal workplaces and greater support for low income families and caregivers of the elderly.

In recognition of her contributions to civil society and the advancement of women’s rights, Lim received a Fulbright Scholarship (1998 – 1999). In 2021, she was appointed as the 8th S R Nathan Fellow for the Study of Singapore by the Institute of Policy Studies.

Cassandra Chiu, Board Member, Disabled People’s Association

Cassandra Chiu is a Singaporean psychotherapist, social advocate and equal opportunity consultant. Chiu is a Director of The Safe Harbour Counselling Centre. Her vision as a person living with blindness is to change what it means to be disabled in Asia for the individual, the community and society at large. Chiu’s work has been published in The Straits Times, Today and the essay collection 50 Years of ASEAN and Singapore. Her first book, about Asian attitudes towards disabilities, was titled A Place for Us and published in March 2019.

Chiu also volunteers at the board level at the Singapore Association of the Visually Handicapped, Disabled People’s Association and K9ASSISTANCE, a charity she founded in 2020 to promote the awareness, understanding and acceptance of all types of Assistance Dogs for the disabled. Chiu is a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader, Social Innovation Park Fellow and recipient of The Singapore Woman Award.

Deryne Sim, Spokesperson and Committee Member, Pink Dot

Deryne Sim is a media and entertainment lawyer and an LGBTQ activist. She is part of Pink Dot SG, a social movement which promotes acceptance and equality for LGBTQ people in Singapore. Her portfolio in Pink Dot SG encompasses providing legal advice to the organisation and spearheading Red Dot for Pink Dot, the business networking arm of Pink Dot SG, which conducts fundraising activities for Pink Dot SG and promotes workplace inclusion in Singapore. Additionally, she is a committee member with the Ready4Repeal movement, which advocates for the decriminalisation of homosexuality in Singapore; and a contributor to the Same But Different legal guidebook for LGBTQ+ couples and families in Singapore. In 2021, she was awarded the Fulbright Scholarship and is using it to pursue an LL.M in Law and Sexuality at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Blackbox: Presenting findings from survey on workplace discrimination

David Black, Founder and CEO

David Black is the founder and CEO of Blackbox Research, a decision science solutions company. As the head of Blackbox, David has carried out studies and provided advice across many areas of Singapore public policy as well as worked with many of Singapore’s largest and preeminent institutions. The homegrown company has also had projects commissioned across more than 40 countries globally.

Before moving to Singapore in 2000, David graduated with a Law Degree from the Australian National University and worked for a period in the Australian Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. He also worked as a political speech writer before becoming an election polling specialist working across Australia and New Zealand. David was a recipient of the ASME Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2019. He is also a contributor and mentor at Advisory, a youth-led non-profit dedicated to empowering young Singaporeans to make informed career and further education choices.

Adelene Ong, Public Policy Research Director

Adelene Ong brings more than a decade of market research experience across the public and private sectors. As a Research Director in the Public Policy team at Blackbox Research, Adelene works with clients from government, NGOs and government-linked corporations to advise on public policy, public service delivery and public communications. In the last six years, she has spearheaded and managed a wide range of public policy research projects for various ministries and statutory boards in Singapore, including Ministry of Trade and Information, Ministry of Health, Ministry of Education, Economic Development Board, Infocomm Media Development Authority and National Council of Social Service. Prior to Blackbox, Adelene held various research positions in globally renowned market research firms such as Kantar, Nielsen and Ipsos. She holds a Bachelor of Science, with a major in Statistics, from National University of Singapore.

Silent spouse abuse – how coercive control is at the heart of family violence

This op-ed was originally published in Channel NewsAsia on October 5 2021.

When Annie* offers an opinion, her husband mocks her: “Wow, you are so smart now, is it?”

He often talks loudly, but if she begins to raise her voice, he gets upset. He discouraged her from looking for work. When she did find a job, he turned up at her workplace and shouted at her. He has had multiple affairs, but he accuses her of cheating on him.

This has been going on for some three decades.

If Maria* has to work late, or if she goes out with her friends, she has to watch the clock closely. She must get home by 11pm – because that’s when her husband will bolt the front door from the inside.

She and their children do not always have Wi-Fi access at home. He decides when it is switched on and off.

He also controls their use of the air-conditioner and other devices in the flat. He sometimes gets violent, so they quietly make do without the aircon or the Wi-Fi.

Tien* is a migrant spouse. Soon after she married her Singapore husband, he stopped talking to her other than to give curt instructions. When her parents sent her money, he confiscated it and gave it to his parents.

She has a job, but he insists that she give all her wages to him. The allowance he gives her is barely enough for their meals. When she was ill, he would not let her see a doctor and told her if she needed medical treatment, she should get it in her home country.

These are just three examples of family violence cases handled by AWARE’s Helpline in 2020 and 2021. There have been many others, particularly as family violence spiked during Singapore’s COVID-19 circuit breakers last year.

Husbands isolating their wives, not letting them see or even communicate with their parents, siblings and friends. Taking away their mobile phones. Going through their text messages and emails. Smashing their work laptops.

Forcing them to stop work. Cancelling their credit and debit cards. Belittling and body-shaming them. Embarrassing them in public.

Telling them what to wear. Managing their movements. Demanding acknowledgement of being right all the time. Controlling every aspect of their lives.

These are not random, unrelated, innocuous behaviours. They add up to a phenomenon called coercive control, which sits at the core of much family violence.

WHAT IS COERCIVE CONTROL?

Coercive control is a pattern of controlling behaviour: Threats, humiliation, intimidation and other demands used to establish power over and to harm, punish or frighten its victims.

It has been called a “strategic form of ongoing oppression and terrorism” that creates a “hostage-like” situation” of “entrapment”, whereby a perpetrator engenders a sort of forced dependence in their victim, subjugating them and limiting their personal liberty.

The man who coined the term, American sociologist and social worker Evan Stark, defined it as “a new conceptual and legal framework for international progress in women’s rights that frames male partner abuse as a crime against autonomy, dignity, equality and liberty.”

Stark estimated that between 60 and 80 per cent of women seeking assistance for abuse experience coercive control.

Coercive control often precedes, or occurs in conjunction with, physical or sexual assault, and can be just as traumatic and harmful – sometimes even more so. Yet for many reasons it is rarely discussed within the context of family or intimate partner violence.

One reason is its insidious subtlety. Many aforementioned behaviours are frequently excused as “normal” jealousies that prove how much a perpetrator loves their partner.

While few people would interpret a punch as an expression of affection, many more might believe a spouse who says he “loves you so much”, he wants you to stay at home all the time.

Sometimes this misunderstanding is shored up by “love-bombing”, or over-the-top demonstrations of affection that serve to manipulate victims.

All this can add up to a situation of crippling stress, anxiety and vulnerability – and a loss of the self.

“He brought me so low, below myself, that the idea of leaving him and having to work myself back up just seemed impossible,” said musician FKA twigs last year about her experience of coercive control at the hands of partner Shia LaBeouf.

RECOGNISING COERCIVE CONTROL AS FAMILY VIOLENCE

Women’s rights organisations around the world have long asked for coercive control to be made a criminal offence. Their advocacy efforts were successful in the United Kingdom.

In 2015, England and Wales legally defined coercive control and made it an offence. Scotland and Northern Ireland have more recently done this too, and similar efforts are being driven elsewhere around the world, reflecting an ongoing paradigm shift in understanding.

Singapore needs to keep up with such a shift. So far, though, we seem to be falling behind.

In early 2020, the Government formed a taskforce to study the issue of family violence in Singapore and to make recommendations to prevent or reduce its occurrence, support victims and rehabilitate perpetrators.

In September, the Taskforce on Family Violence presented its report and made 16 recommendations, all of which are commendable and necessary as we strive to eliminate domestic violence. But while the Taskforce spoke of the need to study “emerging trends” in family violence, the report disappointingly made no mention of coercive control.

While the report recommends for public communication campaigns to “unpack different types of abuse and what they entail, including physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse, and neglect”, not much was said about the tactics of manipulative emotional abuse and control that often predict physical abuse.

Conceiving of violence as episodic incidents instead of a pattern of behaviours obscures its true nature, confuses victims (who may think “my situation can’t be that bad – at least he doesn’t hit me”) and allows perpetrators to escape accountability.

This traditional narrow view leads the criminal justice system to fragment longstanding patterns into individual interactions to prosecute.

This thinking seeps into the way social workers may approach family violence situations, when the time between outbursts of physical violence is sometimes viewed as a break from violence entirely, and a chance for victims to recuperate – yet other forms of abuse, such as humiliation and isolation, may well continue in that period.

We need publicity campaigns that list the many forms of coercive control so that people can recognise them in a partner. The publicity campaigns should help people realise they do not have to stay in abusive relationships, that there is help and support to get out of these situations.

But we also need recognition in our laws of coercive control so that there is scope for intervention by the authorities.

Without this legal definition of what constitutes coercive control, victims may not feel confident they will be believed if they speak up and seek help, and so they stay trapped, suffering in silence, in their abusive relationships.

HOW TO PREVENT COERCIVE CONTROL

There may be some hesitation to criminalise coercive control because of the challenge of proving it. Much will of course have to depend on the testimony of the victim.

Yet this can be backed up by evidence of controlling and abusive behaviour in emails and phone messages, and by the testimony of family members, friends, colleagues and perhaps also neighbours.

Social workers and police officers will need to be trained to spot tell-tale signs of controlling behaviour in a household and the unspoken messages in a victim’s body language.

Research is needed, and much discussion and debate, before we can come up with a suitable conceptual and legal framework for dealing with emotional abuse and coercive control. It is an effort we must make if we are to get to the heart of family violence and have any hope of one day ending partner abuse.

Our understanding of abusive relationships and what we can and should about them is constantly evolving. It was not long ago the police were powerless to intervene in instances of domestic violence unless there were broken bones or other “grievous hurt”.

As a society, as a judicial system, we were simply blind to the reality of domestic abuse, the shocking violence that goes on behind closed doors.

The Women’s Charter was passed in 1961, but Personal Protection Orders, which today are the first line of defence against family violence, only came about later when the Charter was amended in 1980. And it was only last year, in January 2020, that marital rape became a crime.

The Government will present its White Paper on gender equality early next year. Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has indicated that family violence is a key area the paper will cover.

I look forward to proposals that will be today as progressive as the Women’s Charter was when it was first passed in 1961.

I look forward to recognition in the White Paper of the vital importance of understanding and criminalising coercive control.

* Pseudonyms were used in this commentary.

Margaret Thomas, President, AWARE.

Tackling abuse of power at small businesses in Singapore

This op-ed was originally published in The Straits Times on October 4 2021. 

The recent allegations made against BooksActually’s founder Kenny Leck have foregrounded the many structural issues that make start-ups and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) vulnerable to workplace harassment and bullying.

Mr Leck’s alleged abuses of power, according to numerous former employees in an article by Rice Media, include consistently hiring female staff much younger than himself; making overt advances upon these younger employees; denying or delaying salaries and depriving employees of formally designated breaks from work; and even taking steps to isolate his colleague and wife Renee Ting from her family members.

In the wake of the report, Mr Leck, who has denied the allegations, said he will transfer ownership of the store and its publishing arm, Math Paper Press, to his five employees.

Last Thursday, Ms Ting posted a further statement on social media; she said many had contacted her to share similar experiences in their workplaces and lives which they are afraid to speak about even privately because “the world is so loud and our voices feel so small”.

As the literary community in Singapore reels from these disturbing accounts – touching as they do upon workplace sexual harassment, exploitation of labour and even domestic abuse – many are asking: “How could this have happened?”

Yet an examination of the characteristics that determine the distribution of power within SMEs suggests that such a situation is more common than we would like to believe.

What makes small organisations fertile ground for abuse?

SMEs differ from large organisations in crucial ways, and not all these differences are beneficial to their employees.

Many owner-managers of SMEs claim that, being less encumbered by the bureaucracies of larger organisations, they are able to enjoy reduced management-worker distance, and are thus able to resolve worker problems more effectively and efficiently. But while this may be the case for some SMEs, it is still far from a universal experience.

Based on extensive research, and Aware’s own experience supporting clients via our Workplace Harassment and Discrimination Advisory, we have identified three unique challenges that SMEs face that make them fertile ground for abuse.

Attitudes and allocations

First, SMEs differ from large organisations in their attitudes and resource allocations towards developing employment frameworks. In an SME, a human resource policy and/or HR department (even if made up of one person) is often seen as a superfluous expense that the company can get by without.

A perception that the HR function is not specialised also contributes to the belief among SMEs that managers can deal with employee issues on their own. A survey conducted in the United Kingdom in 2013 found that HR specialists existed in less than 30 per cent of SMEs – as low as 15 per cent in owner-managed family businesses. No comparable data seems to be available for Singapore, but we can reasonably expect SMEs in Singapore not to be vastly different from their UK counterparts.

In July last year, Aware and an independent third-party consultant interviewed seven SMEs from different sectors,

such as e-commerce and home cleaning, to understand the unique challenges they faced in preventing and managing workplace harassment.

One of the owner-manager interviewees told us that the void created by a lack of HR policies is typically filled by his own instincts: “I rely on my past experience – and I don’t have too much training or expertise on the topic.”

Yet without a professional policy on workplace harassment, basing the prevention and management of workplace harassment purely on intuition can crack the door open for victim-blaming attitudes.

Informal culture, lack of policy

The second unique characteristic of SMEs that makes them prone to abuse is their typically informal, even familial, culture.

This culture extends to how SMEs treat employment relations: Rather than having standardised employment conditions, employees’ experiences in SMEs can be individualised and contingent upon personal relationships with their bosses. As one of the employees interviewed for the Aware study said: “If I have a good relationship with my manager, I am able to talk about issues. If not, then it is hard to bring these things up.”

The informality creates a lopsided dynamic whereby employees’ personal relationship with their manager determines whether or not they can report inappropriate behaviour and receive the support they need. Meanwhile, managers’ decisions, behaviours and treatment of employees remain free of the scrutiny characteristic of formal employment relationships.

Unchecked power, as plenty of research shows, changes how people make sense of their worlds, in ways that neuroscientists and psychologists believe explain workplace harassment.

Researchers have found that people in power consider others’ perspectives less frequently. They have also found that power gives people an “illusory” sense of control (that is, the belief that one has the ability to influence outcomes that are actually beyond one’s reach) and prompts people to presume sexual interest where it does not exist.

Attempts to regulate employee relations in SMEs are often met with objections, with critics pointing to compliance costs associated with adapting to new rules and obligations.

There may be a grain of truth here, since SMEs often lack the necessary resources or expertise of in-house human resources. Many owner-managers also loathe measures that interfere with their managerial prerogative, claiming that time spent on managing employee relations is time away from building their businesses and brands.

Finally, while Singapore’s Protection from Harassment Act covers harassment, there is no specific focus on workplace sexual harassment. The Tripartite Alliance for Fair and Progressive Employment Practices’ Advisory on Workplace Harassment is not legally enforceable. As a result, there is no regulatory pressure on SMEs to adopt workplace harassment policies.

SMEs do not have the wherewithal to get outside support – unlike multinational corporations, which may be held to workplace harassment laws in their countries of origin – and hire external help to write policies and provide employees with training on appropriate workplace behaviours.

Three big changes

What needs to change? We need three big changes to disrupt “business as usual” in start-ups and small businesses.

First, Singapore should introduce workplace harassment legislation that places a non-negotiable legal responsibility on employers to prevent and manage workplace harassment. Without this legal duty, most SMEs will not take the necessary steps to address workplace harassment.

An effective way to do this may be to include provisions in the forthcoming anti-discrimination Act to make companies accountable for workplace harassment if they are unable to show that they took reasonable steps to prevent it. This is a common approach in other jurisdictions, such as the UK and Australia.

Second, the vast power differential between leaders and subordinates, especially in start-ups and small businesses, needs to be minimised. Research shows that accountability in the form of policies is often an effective constraint on unchecked power. All start-ups and SMEs should be provided with support to frame HR policies, train employees on their employment rights, and assure employees that managers will be held accountable for any abuses of power.

Finally, we need to provide a stronger external avenue that victims of workplace harassment and those experiencing a denial of employment rights can approach to file complaints, receive advice on their options and raise confidential concerns without alerting their employers.

SMEs play an essential role within the landscape of Singapore’s economy (making up 99 per cent of all enterprises and supporting 72 per cent of total employment in Singapore), and the “David versus Goliath” narrative frequently associated with them is inherently stirring. But without specifically helping SMEs tackle workplace harassment, we are unlikely to make our workplaces safe enough for women and other employees who may be vulnerable to abuses of power.

Shailey Hingorani, Head of Research and Advocacy, AWARE

Firms too can play a key role in supporting victims of family violence

This letter was originally published in The Straits Times on September 29 2021.

I agree with Forum writer Kristine Lam that more needs to be done to tackle family violence in Singapore (More can be done to deal with issue of family violence here, Sept 22).

Enhancing societal support and laws will go a long way in addressing the issue, but companies too can play an important role.

Family violence is typically perceived as a personal matter, but its impact tends to show up in workplaces as well.

In Singapore, 5,135 family violence cases were reported to the police last year. Considering that the actual incidence rate is likely much higher due to under-reporting, these numbers would mean that a sizeable portion of the workforce has likely experienced such violence.

Family violence victims may take their trauma to work, leading to heightened distress, anxiety or distractibility.

Perpetrators may also try to sabotage victims’ work, by destroying their laptops or restricting their movements, for instance, or harassing them while they are at work.

This creates an unsafe environment for not only victims but also co-workers and clients.

However, the workplace can also offer respite from the abuse for victims.

Work offers people stability and reassures them that they are worthy of dignity and respect, even when their abusers make them feel worthless. Additionally, earning an income allows them to achieve financial independence and enables them to potentially escape abusive relationships.

Victims may also confide in trusted colleagues, who can connect them to essential resources, such as family violence centres.

Catalyse, the Association of Women for Action and Research’s corporate advisory, consulting and training arm, has trained many companies to update their human resource policies to tackle family violence in the workplace.

Employers are taught to identify common signs of abuse and to provide some basic support.

Companies can also offer paid leave, flexible work arrangements and advance salary payments so that victims can attend court or seek medical attention, counselling or other forms of support.

Such efforts will not only help protect employees’ safety and well-being, but also improve workplace relations, promote worker retention, reduce absence and increase motivation and performance.

Lee Yoke Mun, Projects Executive, AWARE

Want to fight online misogyny? Look to the bystanders

This op-ed was originally published in Today on September 27 2021. 

Are our offhand likes and shares on social media as innocuous as we might think? Perhaps not, if we are bystanders to online misogyny and violence.

A bystander is someone who witnesses an act of abuse, including violence against women, and has the choice whether or not to intervene (for example, to stop the violence or help the victim in some way).

Bystanders might know the parties involved –– friends, family, colleagues –– or they could be strangers, meaning they have no personal stake in the situation.

The traditional concept of a bystander has been limited by geographic circumstance, for example, commuters at MRT stations who alert security, the victim or both about sexual voyeurism.

However, as the sites of abuse have changed –– with our lives increasingly led in online spaces  –– our idea of bystanders has also evolved. And rightfully so.

Given the chance, we’d all like to think that we would be the good bystander, heroically coming to a victim’s defence.

But is that actually what’s happening online? A new study by Aware and technology firm Quilt.AI suggests otherwise.

By analysing publicly available data, our research team tracked and categorised different types of misogynistic statements across select platforms, to get a better understanding of what misogyny looks like and the kind of support it enjoys.

First, we sourced sexist and misogynistic content from local Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and the forums Reddit, HardwareZone and Sammyboy.

We found comments such as “women deserve to be enslaved”, “you’re a man-hating gargoyle” and “doctor, the sandwich won’t make itself”.

Then we trained Quilt.AI’s proprietary machine-learning model to recognise similar content on its own.

The model picked up a random sample of around 700 misogynistic tweets between 2016 and this year, and found that most fell into the misogyny category of “belittling and objectifying”.

The second most prevalent category was “flipping the narrative” (that is, implying that men are the oppressed gender, not women), followed by “rape myths”.

A closer look at how users were interacting with this misogynistic content revealed that, in terms of engagement, misogynistic tweets handily outperform non-misogynistic tweets.

They are twice as likely to be liked and 4.5 times more likely to be retweeted when compared to non-misogynistic tweets.

In short, users are not only failing to call out misogynistic content, or simply ignoring it –– they are actively engaging with and promoting it, thus perpetuating misogynistic behaviour themselves.

WHY ARE BYSTANDERS RESPONDING POSITIVELY TO MISOGYNISTIC CONTENT?

One might have expected to see more positive bystander intervention on Twitter than on other social media platforms, given that  –– unlike Facebook, Instagram or TikTok  –– it is designed expressly to facilitate discourse between individuals.

Nevertheless, we have a few theories as to why misogynistic content seems to enjoy such popularity with bystanders on Twitter.

For one thing, bystanders might believe that by liking and retweeting misogynistic content is “not as bad” as originating it themselves. (Think of this as the “he started it” argument for evading culpability.)

Yet the practical effect of liking and retweeting is reinforcement and amplification, which can be devastating to victims.

After all, when a piece of content  –– say, a sexist statement like “the gender pay gap has been debunked by economists”  –– picks up traction on social media, it racks up eyeballs exponentially, gaining cultural significance and influence in spite of being blatantly disprovable.

Secondly, these users may simply not recognise this content to be harmful or problematic in the first place.

Research indicates that understanding of gender inequality in its various forms is not particularly strong in Singapore.

For example, a 2019 Ipsos survey of 1,019 Singapore citizens and permanent residents found that only 32 per cent believed that there was a gender pay gap in the country, while 45 per cent believed that women who wear revealing clothes “should not complain” if men make comments about their appearance.

The latter, in particular, falls under the category of ideas known as rape myths  –– ideas commonly used to justify sexual assault, often by displacing blame from perpetrator to victim  –– which comprised 11 per cent of the misogynistic tweets captured by our model.

Another reason why bystanders might be hesitant to intervene in online misogyny is how difficult it can be to breach the social norms of masculine solidarity. This may be especially salient if the originator of the content is a peer or a user they admire.

It’s hard for friends to call each other out, a process that typically leads to some combination of embarrassment, frustration and anger.

A power dynamic might also be at play, based on “influence”. A user with thousands of followers might be more difficult to publicly rebuke than someone with a negligible following.

Lastly, bystanders might not feel compelled to intervene in violence because of the way an online space such as Twitter compounds diffusion of responsibility.

By this principle, the more bystanders are present in a situation, the less personal responsibility falls upon each individual bystander to take action –– in other words, everybody expects somebody else to step up.

Such diffusion can dissuade even individuals in small groups to take action –– all the more so in a virtual space like Twitter, where thousands, even millions of potential bystanders are in the “room”.

Though our study focused on Twitter, we can expect these factors to play a part in bystander behaviour on other online platforms, too.

BUILDING BETTER BYSTANDER COMMUNITIES

Maybe you’re thinking: What’s the big deal? It’s just social media.

If so, consider that globally, there are twice as many male Twitter users as female users, a statistic that many have linked to the rampant misogyny on the platform –– which, as Amnesty International pointed out, “leads women to self-censor what they post, limit their interactions, and even drives women off Twitter completely”.

For many professional women (from artists to academics to politicians), having a presence on Twitter is a crucial part of their work.

Consider too that the tendency of online hostility to veer into real-world violence is palpable. A study published in February, for example, found that geolocated misogynistic tweets in the United States correlated with domestic- and family-violence incidents in those areas.

The engagement rates of misogynistic content speak to the need for policymakers to prioritise bystander education.

It’s not just the loudest voices we need to watch out for — the online equivalent of that one guy who insults his female colleagues behind their backs.

We also need to reach those who would nod and laugh at that guy’s jokes, or even repeat them to others later on.

Instead of turning the other cheek, or contributing to a “pile-on”, a bystander can take real action against online abuse by posting something supportive about the victim or sending them a sympathetic private message.

They could also directly call out the abuser by responding critically to their original post.

Comprehensive sexuality education that instils gender-equal values and the skills to critique violent, misinformed ideas is ever more essential in the digital age.

Beyond that foundational education, though, bystander intervention programmes that encourage more active prevention of misogyny and violence should be developed in Singapore.

A systematic review of bystander programmes in the US, Canada and India observed that their most pronounced benefit was changing attitudes towards rape myths.

Students’ rejection of rape myths was sustained both immediately after the programme, and months afterwards.

The Government can work with non-profits and sex educators to develop such programmes in Singapore — and design them to cover online situations, in addition to offline ones — as part of the solution to the spread of misogyny.

Over a three-hour online session, a successfully designed programme can help bystanders identify the problem, assume responsibility and teach them how to intervene while keeping themselves and the victims safe.

Ultimately, we should think of these efforts as not only a means to stop potential perpetrators of misogyny and abuse, but measures that strengthen the resilience of our entire society against inequality.

Shailey Hingorani, Head of Research and Advocacy, AWARE and Michelle Gay, Director of Operations, Quilt.AI