Eve of the Factory

" I never realized how scary harassment was for women until I went thorugh Not Guilty's training".

These words were uttered by a man in Cook Door factory who works in the HR department.

Not Guilty is adamant on making men a pivotal part of the Eve of the factory training.

Yet, every time we train, we need to tweak the program a little bit.

It is amazing how women in the Middle East still believe that the way a woman dresses makes it OK for a man to harass or sexually abuse her.

In the last factory we trained at, and in the pre testing, one of the questions was, "Do you think the way a woman dresses increases her risk of harassment"? Mind you, Egypt is quite a conservative country and most ost of the women in that particular training, answering the pre testing questionnaire were veiled.

The amazimg thing was that the next question was, "Have you yourself ever been harassed"? 100% of the women answered "YES".

Going through the questions with the women, we asked them, then why do men harass you if you are veiled? and this question always catches women by surprise. They cannot reconcile what they think wth what actually happens to them.

This shows the power of culture which many times superseded the power of logic. Women actually beleive that they bring harassment on themselves, and completely absolve the harasser of his crime.

Not Guilty is seriously considering researching the power of culture that makes women believe that some women actually deserve to be harassed. How sad!

Not Guilty has added an anger management component in the Eve of the Factory training, where we train attendees on healthy and unhealthy ways to manage their anger, whether it be because of harassment.

We plan to train in 10 factories until the end of this year.

Help us abolish hrassment and abuse.

Links:

• http://www.notguiltyinc.org