LARC researchers attend RAITH Foundation Brown Bag session

Ayesha Motala and Nokwanda Sihlali, both LARC researchers, attended a RAITH Foundation Brown Bag that was presented by the Women's Legal Centre at the Black Sash offices on 2 August.

The event, which combined various organisations in the room such as Commission for Gender Equality, amaBhungane, Workers World, DAG, SJC etc. focused on taking a victim centred approach to sexual harassment. The civil society sector has been hit with numerous sexual harassment scandals and beyond just looking at how to be good at disaster management, this session was about teaching the various organisations how to possibly prevent the assaults and how to effectively deal with them through a gendered lens.

The legal processes of handling sexual harassment in the workplace must not displace the social processes that underlie the usual power dynamics that exist within those processes. As such the WLC highlighted that intersectionality is a very significant concept that situates due process in context and holds the victim at the centre of the policy. By re-imaging sexual harassment through an African Feminist legal approach we are thus able to develop our own sexual harassment policies that are not gender neutral or gender silent.