Women workers across Africa face harassment, intimidation, and violence daily—from domestic workers laboring in isolation, to agricultural workers in rural areas, to women in the informal economy who constitute over 85% of women’s employment in sub-Saharan Africa. Sexual harassment and gender-based violence in the workplace undermine women’s dignity, their economic security, and their fundamental right to safe and decent work. As trade unions, we recognize that violence against women is not only a social issue but fundamentally a workers’ rights issue.
The digital age has brought unprecedented opportunities for connection, education, and economic participation. However, it has also created new avenues for violence against women and girls. Digital violence—including cyberstalking, online harassment, non-consensual sharing of intimate images, doxing, and technology-facilitated abuse—has become a serious threat to women’s safety, dignity, and participation in public life.
In Africa, where internet penetration is growing rapidly, women trade unionists, activists, and workers who speak out on labour rights and gender equality increasingly face coordinated online attacks designed to silence them.
The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the digitalization of work but also exposed women workers to new forms of surveillance, control, and harassment through digital platforms. Platform workers—predominantly women in domestic work and care sectors—face algorithmic discrimination and have limited recourse when experiencing abuse from clients or through digital systems.
Workers’ organisations must strengthen their commitment by integrating gender-based violence prevention into collective bargaining agreements, ensuring that workplace policies address harassment, provide support for survivors, and create safe reporting mechanisms. They must also ensure women’s meaningful participation and leadership at all levels of union structures, recognizing that women’s leadership strengthens the movement’s ability to address gender-based violence.
ITUC-Africa reaffirms its unwavering commitment to ending all forms of violence against women and girls. We will continue to advocate for the ratification and implementation of ILO Convention 190 across Africa.
As we launch these 16 Days of Activism, ITUC-Africa calls on African governments to:
• Ratify and implement ILO Convention 190 and its accompanying Recommendation 206 without delay, ensuring that national legislation covers all forms of violence and harassment in the world of work, including domestic violence and its impacts on work.
• Enact and enforce comprehensive legislation that criminalizes all forms of gender-based violence, including digital violence, with adequate penalties that serve as effective deterrents.
• Ensure women’s safe and secure access to the internet and digital technologies by developing and implementing policies that protect women from online harassment while respecting freedom of expression and privacy rights.
• Extend labour law protections to all women workers, including those in domestic work, agriculture, and the informal economy.
Violence against women is not a private matter; it is a societal problem that requires collective action. We call on everyone to raise their voices to challenge harmful attitudes and behaviours. We must support women’s labour rights and economic empowerment as fundamental tools in preventing violence.

In solidarity,
Akhator Joel Odigie
General Secretary, ITUC-Africa