Key lessons for gender-responsive human rights due diligence

A woman garment worker looks up to the camera as she works in knitting section. Photo credit: Shutterstock.

Over the course of ETI’s Gender Responsive Action Community (GRACE) programme, one truth became clear. Preventing GBVH isn’t about quick fixes. It’s about shifting power, deepening trust, and building systems that genuinely work for women. The lessons emerging from this project reflect both the challenges and the opportunities for brands, suppliers, and communities to drive meaningful change. Here’s what we learned.

  • Meaningfully engage stakeholders: Ensure genuine two-way engagement and partnerships with communities, business associations, trade unions, and NGOs, recognising women as rightsholders with voice and agency.
  • Prioritise women workers: Centre the rights, needs, and voices of women through consultation, representation, and transparent information sharing, backed by high-level commitment to resource allocation and the responsibility and oversight of CEOs and Boards.
  • Adopt gender- and intersectional-responsive approaches: Design solutions that address root causes and power imbalances. This is especially relevant in the A&T sector, where young and migrant women are predominant.
  • Address systemic risks: Tackle GBVH-related risks, such as insecure contracts and economic dependency, alongside broader concerns about living wages and decent work in a sector that is predominantly female.
  • Foster a culture of rights and respect: Promote fundamental rights at work and drive proactive changes in the working environment, including ensuring that policies and procedures are aligned with ILO C190.
  • Clarify expectations and maximise impact: Identify leverage points for brand align actions with available support, and adopt strategic approaches focused on learning and progressive improvement.
  • Strengthen collaboration and remediation: Build gender-responsive, worker-centred frameworks where risk assessments lead to actionable prevention plans with agreed short-term, medium-term, and long-term goals.
  • Create safe, participatory reporting spaces: Think outside the box and to find innovative participatory methods, in partnership with trade unions and NGOs, such as community-based café projects, to provide information and opportunities for engagement. It is vital to emphasise safe, participatory processes for worker consultation, such as off-site focus group discussions, anonymous surveys and women's factory safety walks.
  • Measure and integrate anti-GBVH actions: Develop practical strategies to effectively integrate GBVH preventive actions and outcomes into KPIs and supplier scorecards, event when measurement is challenging.

These lessons remind us that progress against GBVH comes from sustained collaboration, listening to women’s voices, and addressing power imbalances at every level. Real change requires investing not just in policies, but in the people who bring them to life. 

Tomorrow, we will explore the critical role of social dialogue in preventing GBVH and driving meaningful, systemic change.

Blog post

Blog series: Tackling gender-based violence through GRACE

Male and female garment workers, Bangladesh
A five-part blog series on ETI’s 18-month Gender Responsive Action Community (GRACE) programme, which established a community of practice in the A&T sector, to improve policies, processes, and practices to prevent and address GBVH in suppliers' supply chains.
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ETI's blog covers issues at the intersection of business and human rights. We feature posts by, for and from our members and allies; we do not accept or offer payment for posts or publish content outside of these criteria. We welcome a range of insights and opinions from our guest bloggers, though don't necessarily agree with everything they say.