When she found out she was pregnant, Carolina was afraid to go to the hospital.
She had heard that in Brazil, women of color had been discriminated against and treated violently by healthcare staff.
Thanks to a programme supported by UNFPA and Johnson & Johnson, midwives like Leonor are now trained on how to respect and protect their patients’ reproductive rights.
As part of its Women’s Health in the Workplace programme, UNFPA engages with businesses around the world to support female employees in achieving gender equality inside and outside of work.
According to Ethical Trading Initiative, approximately 190 million women work in global supply chains concentrated in countries with high unmet needs for women’s health services. Often the needs of these women workers, from health care to protection from harassment and violence to fair wages, are neglected.
Businesses can be the agents of change to ensure that more women have the means to realize their sexual and reproductive rights by providing opportunities to overcome some of the barriers that workers face in accessing these services. Such barriers can include lack of information, financial constraints and working hours.
UNFPA works with businesses to address the specific challenges and needs of their female workforce in different regions. In some Eastern European countries, UNFPA is partnering with the private sector and governments to combat gender-based violence and to champion gender-responsive family policies. In Asia and the Pacific, UNFPA works with companies and factories to provide on-site family planning counselling and services.
Business against domestic violence, UNFPA Turkey
“I’ve had to take large amounts of sick leave and when that ran out, annual leave, to deal with the effects of an abusive partner. The fear of losing my job made dealing with the emotional and legal issues more stressful than it already was. Losing all my sick leave and much of my annual leave adds to the stress. I was trying to keep this secret of the abusive relationship away from my work life. I was ashamed and what could the company do for it anyway? ” – Anonymous email to an HR Director
Gender-based violence, which reflects and reinforces inequalities between women and men, hasIts devastating consequences that not only affect women but society as a whole. Research indicates high prevalence (32 per cent) of sexual and physical violence among white-collar working women and the absence of response mechanisms within the private sector in Turkey. This means that women, regardless of their background and seniority in their work life, are persistently subjected to physical, psychological and economic violence. This owes much to cultural norms, fear of losing one's job, shame and stigma but also lack of support mechanisms to talk about violence and seek help.
UNFPA promotes gender equality and combats gender-based violence wherever it occurs, including places of employment. Based on results of UNFPA-sponsored research, UNFPA Turkey supported the Sabancı University Corporate Governance Forum of Turkey to develop a guidebook for private-sector companies interested in supporting survivors of gender-based violence. Several companies received training to develop company policies to combat domestic violence; one of the first to participate was Garanti Bank, which established a hotline for its employees.
Since 2013, Johnson & Johnson (J&J) has been a strong supporter of UNFPA on various midwifery-led initiatives both at national and global levels.
Building a thriving and resilient health workforce was the objective of Johnson & Johnson’s commitment at the 25th anniversary of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD25) held in November 2019. At the Nairobi Summit, Johnson & Johnson pledged its support to achieving the “Three Zeros.” Further information on Johnson & Johnson’s commitment at the Nairobi Summit can be found here. Johnson & Johnson Foundation was an initial funder of the Safe Birth, Even Here campaign by UNFPA that aimed to encourage private sector partners to come together to end preventable maternal deaths.
In a world where every 2 minutes a woman dies giving birth, beginning in 2017, UNFPA and Johnson & Johnson Foundation collaborated on the five-year project: “Safe Birth, Even Here: Reducing Maternal Mortality in Fragile Contexts”. The project reduced maternal and newborn deaths through training midwives and skilled birth attendants, as well as strengthening maternal and newborn health services for 234,000 women, girls and newborns across Liberia, Haiti and Pakistan.
In addition to this work, there remains a continued need for evidence-based advocacy to address the gaps in quality midwifery care. UNFPA completed the two year midwifery advocacy project titled: “Midwives: The Unsung Heroes of Maternal and Newborn Health”. This project funded by the Johnson & Johnson Foundation centered on the launch of the key findings of a new research paper on Impact of Midwives published by UNFPA, ICM and WHO in the Lancet Global Health in December 2020.
As part of the efforts to improve collaboration and coordinated efforts between midwifery stakeholders, UNFPA has recently established AIME: The Alliance to Improve Midwifery Education in 2021, through the support of the Johnson and Johnson Foundation. It is envisaged that improved coordination and collaboration between partners, will contribute to better quality of care for women, newborns and their families through strengthening midwifery education, training and the professionalization of midwives.
The education of midwives is also central in the fight against maternal deaths, stillbirths and neonatal deaths. Despite the strong evidence to support investment in midwifery, midwifery education and training in low- and middle-income countries remains grossly under-invested in, with wide variations in content, quality and duration.
As a result, UNFPA has teamed up with the Johnson & Johnson Center for Health Worker Innovation to strengthen the quality of midwifery training and education globally. Going into its third year, one key output is to develop a competency based curriculum resource that most African, Latin American and Asian countries can use to build upon competency based midwifery education. In addition, for continuous professional development, new e-modules and face to face training module. These can be used for strengthening emergency obstetric care competencies of midwives and there are also modules for faculty development. These efforts will support the delivery of high-quality midwifery services within health facilities and community settings in the respective countries.