News
Contributing to Safe and Empowering Workplaces
Women’s safety is a key priority in order to ensure that women in our supply chain live and work in a safe, positive and empowering environment where they can thrive.
We are proud to be joining forces with the Women Safety Accelerator fund, in collaboration with IDH, the Sustainable Trade Initiative, and Taylors, Tesco, ETP and Unilever.
Through this industry-wide collaboration, WSAF aims to ensure that all women and girls are socially, economically and politically empowered in rural spaces that are free from sexual harassment and other forms of violence. The Fund also accelerates the scale up of the UN Women Global Women’s Safety Framework in rural Spaces’ and contribute to the UN Sustainable Development Goal 5 on Gender Equality.
Indeed, according to the diagnostic study conducted in the Indian tea sector by IDH, 31% of women faced at least one form of violence, 24% of women reported feeling unsafe at home, in workplace, in public places and after sunset and 46% of managers are not confident in addressing issues of VAWG; the level of confidence to tackle such cases is lower amongst the supervisory.
The Fund works primarily in West Bengal and Assam to build awareness and understanding of gender-based violence and support the tea industry to put measures in place to prevent and respond to it. This will in turn enable a reduction of instances of gender-based violence, support the strengthening of grievance mechanisms with trusted and credible reporting mechanisms, influence social norms, attitudes and behaviour that promote women and girls’ rights and provide opportunities for women workers to upskill as well as improve representation of women in supervisory & managerial positions.
So far, 45,000 women tea workers in India have been reached and the Fund will reach 200,000 by 2023. This will cover all the tea gardens Twinings sources from in both Assam and Darjeeling.
"By joining collaborative programmes like Women Safety Accelerator Fund, Twinings will continue its commitments towards transforming workplaces to recognise gender equality as a business priority. The tea producers and the tea communities will benefit through training, access to resources and tools, and specialized services to strengthen prevention and response mechanisms to gender-based violence and harassment. Besides trainings, this programme is also building linkages with the government administration and enhancing capacity of local NGOs for long term sustainability."
Bipul Borah,
Senior Social Impact Manager.