The Garden of Hope Foundation yesterday urged the government to offer more help to female victims of domestic violence trying to find jobs, while also urging businesses to provide more job opportunities.
“Many victims of domestic violence are in self-denial, have low self-esteem or bad interpersonal skills because of long-term physical or verbal abuse,” the group's executive director Chi Hui-jung (紀惠容) told a press conference. “Such characteristics often have an impact on victims' ability to find a job or get along with colleagues, which eventually leads to loss of job or even long-term unemployment.”
Citing the results of a report last year by the UN's International Labor Organization, Chi said that the unemployment rate among women around the world in 2008 was 6.3 percent — higher than the 5.9 percent for men.
“This shows that women in general are already at a disadvantage when it comes to finding employment, not to mention that it's much worse for female victims of domestic abuse,” Chi said.
A former abuse victim who was trained at one of the foundation's shelter factories, shared her story.
Now divorced, Hsiao Chuan (小娟) is living with her three-year-old child and working at a food manufacturing plant.
“I never smiled when I first started working at the factory, because the only feeling I had in my mind was fear — the fear of being beaten,” she said. “I couldn't even sleep at night.”
Little by little, Hsiao Chuan began to feel more at ease and more confident when she discovered that she could actually make money to support herself and her child.
“I began to sleep without worry at night again, I am happy that I can make money to raise my own kid,” she said, while expressing her appreciation to social workers at the factory who repeatedly encouraged her and the babysitters at the factory who took care of her child so she could learn new job skills.
“In collaboration with the Council of Labor Affairs, we've started a program to help domestic abuse victims find jobs and to train them in shelter factories,” Chi said. “At least 80 percent of the women trained at our shelter factories successfully find a job afterwards.”
However, the foundation's resources are limited and the shelter factories can only offer a limited number of positions for training.
“We need the government and businesses to join the effort — it's not just about helping these women, but also about helping their children,” Chi said.
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