Corporate approaches to reducing intimate partner violence through workplace initiatives

Abstract

Intimate partner violence affects many people in all aspects of society. In a report released in July 2000, the US Justice Department and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that nearly 25% of women and about 7% of men say that they have been raped or assaulted by a current or former partner. According to the estimates, every year approximately 1.5 million American women and more than 800,000 men are raped or assaulted by an intimate partner [1]. Whereas women are less likely than men to be victims of violent crimes overall, women are five to eight times more likely than men to be victimized by an intimate partner [2]. Thirty percent of Americans say that they know a woman who has been abused physically by her husband or boyfriend in the past year [3]. A 1998 study found that one of five couples in the United States had experienced domestic violence in the previous year [4]. Intimate partner violence has serious consequences for the workplace, but it rarely is acknowledged as an element of workplace violence. In 1987, the Philadelphia Coalition on Domestic Violence ran a print advertisement that was targeted at the local business community with the headline ‘‘Do You Want a Solution to a $5 Billion Dollar Problem?’’ The advertisement ran in metro Philadelphia newspapers, suburban newspapers, and local business publications. It emphasized that domestic violence is a social issue and a labor problem that businesses need to address. It offered free assistance and literature to businesses. The Coalition did not receive a single call [5]. The rationale for addressing intimate partner violence at the workplace was not clear to employers in 1987. What currently is known about this type of violence? At the workplace, intimate partner violence costs US businesses an estimated $3 to $5 billion dollars per year [6]. The yearly total healthcare costs of family