WorkStrong – Women Helping Women

Sept 18, 2019, www.wcpo.com

By: Lucy May

CINCINNATI — The city of Cincinnati’s 6,000 employees can feel a bit safer these days.

That’s because the city has enhanced its policies addressing gender-based violence with the help of Women Helping Women and its WorkStrong program.

Women Helping Women used WorkStrong to help city officials examine and strengthen Cincinnati’s administrative regulation protecting city employees. The effort also included training city employees and department directors to recognize the signs of gender-based violence and help co-workers who experience it.

“Any workforce that size in this region, state and nation is going to be experiencing gender-based violence,” said Kristin Smith Shrimplin, Women Helping Women’s president and CEO. “What we’re really trying to do is empower our coworkers in the community to respond: ‘I believe you. It’s really not your fault, and there’s help.’”

Assistant City Manager Sheryl Long said city leaders were drawn to WorkStrong because it offers a tool kit for managers and employees in addition to the training the program provides.

The city regularly reviews policies and procedures to ensure they are consistent with best practices and reflect the world in which we live, she said.

“Anything we can do to provide our employees with resources is always helpful,” Long said. “We all want to make sure that they have an environment where they can come to work and feel safe and do the work on behalf of taxpayers.”

The problem of gender-based violence enters the workplace in many ways, ranging from lost productivity to homicide, Smith Shrimplin said.

Gender-based violence results in $8.3 billion in lost productivity nationally, according to Women Helping Women. In addition, the agency notes that:

Almost half of all full-time working adults work alongside a survivor of intimate partner violence.
More than 87% of employees who experience sexual harassment do not file a complaint.
56% of employees who experience gender-based violence are late to work at least five times in a month.
25% of rape survivors lose their jobs within a year of an assault.
And 67% of people who experience gender-based violence report that the perpetrator came to their workplace.

“We know violence against women and girls and just gender-based violence exists. We know that,” Smith Shrimplin said. “What we don’t all know is that there are innovative, workable solutions that we can all have a piece in activating.”

Women Helping Women and the city hope to publicize their work together in advance of October, which is Domestic Violence Awareness Month.

“When you have one out of three women in their lifetime experiencing gender-based violence, when you have one out of four teens before the age of 18 experiencing sexual violence, when you have one out of three teens experiencing dating violence, it’s a public health epidemic,” Smith Shrimplin said.

“WorkStrong is part of a movement to really say it’s on all of us, whether you’re a corporation, a workforce, a government entity, a nonprofit, whether you’re a coach, a student, a campus — how are we all going to lean in and understand that absolutely, unequivocally gender-based violence is preventable?”

Long said city leaders hope the city’s participation in the program will encourage other employers in the region.

“There’s a lot of people usually suffering in silence with this,” she said. “Things like this make people feel like they’re not alone.”

Smith Shrimplin said the goal is to reduce gender-based violence.

The city of Cincinnati also has committed to work with Women Helping Women in October for a social media campaign designed to raise awareness about the effects of domestic violence and gender-based violence both inside and outside the workplace.

“We don’t need to keep getting 11,000 calls on our hotline every single year at this agency,” she said. “Not every city in America is doing this, and I am proud of Cincinnati in being part of that movement to lead from the front and lead from the edge and say, ‘We don’t have to wait until there’s a horrific issue to put this on the map. We’re putting it on the map now.’”

More information about Women Helping Women and WorkStrong is available online. If you or someone you know is experiencing gender-based violence, you can call the Women Helping Women 24-hour hotline at (513) 381-5610.

Lucy May writes about the people, places and issues that define our region – to celebrate what makes the Tri-State great and shine a spotlight on issues we need to address. To reach Lucy, email [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @LucyMayCincy.

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Meghan Cummings, executive director of The Women's Fund of the Greater Cincinnati Foundation, speaks during a forum about intimate partner violence

March 06, 2019, www.wcpo.com

‘Biggest hidden problem we’ve ever encountered’

By: Lucy May

CINCINNATI — Although it’s been decades since Karen Bankston was married to him, her second husband’s cruelty is never far from the surface.

His abuse permeated her life, she said, at home, at church and even at work.

“On the job, when I got promoted, he accused me of sleeping with my supervisors,” said Bankston, an adjunct professor at the University of Cincinnati’s College of Nursing. “The emotional abuse is just as horrible as any physical abuse. It was never, ‘I’m proud of you.’ You really begin to question yourself.”

Bankston took the promotion and ended that marriage. She has been happily married to a different man for nearly three decades.

But her experience as a survivor of abuse is far from unique.

After a 2016 study found intimate partner violence interferes with the ability of local women to build better lives for themselves and their children, The Women’s Fund of the Greater Cincinnati Foundation wanted to help.

“We talk about all these challenges to women in the workplace, and this is like the biggest hidden problem we’ve ever encountered,” said Meghan Cummings, executive director of The Women’s Fund. “It’s the one that goes unnamed. It’s the one we just don’t talk about, and it’s so prevalent in a person’s ability to move up and into different careers.”

The Women’s Fund worked with a group of nonprofit organizations and businesses over the past 18 months to better understand how intimate partner violence interferes with working women’s ability to become self-sufficient.

Four survivors were at the center of the effort, helping the other participants understand their experiences and what could have helped them at work.

The goal was to increase understanding and empathy among employers when it comes to intimate partner violence. The group also developed recommendations for policies and procedures that businesses and nonprofit organizations can adopt to help employees who are struggling.

‘Calls we don’t want to get’

Nationally, one out of three women experience some form of physical violence at the hands of an intimate partner, according to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence. Gender-based violence affects women across the region, said Kristin Shrimplin, CEO of Women Helping Women.

“What we know is survivors walk amongst us everywhere in this region,” she said. “So of course that means they’re in the workforce.”

Unfortunately, some companies react by ending a woman’s employment after they discover the problem, she said.

“It’s through the lens of liability or through the lens of other things that go on paper that are really through the lens of risk mitigation,” Shrimplin said. “They’re being held responsible for the violence.”

Having four survivors of intimate partner violence at the center of the latest effort was critically important, said Sarah Corlett, director of community development and strategy for Design Impact.

The Women’s Fund enlisted Design Impact to help guide the group’s work.

Corlett said everyone agreed it was important not to duplicate the efforts of other local organizations. Women Helping Women, for example, has a program called WorkStrong that helps corporations, governments and nonprofit organizations craft policies that help employees who are experiencing intimate partner violence.

Shrimplin said her agency developed that program after several employers contacted Women Helping Women because they had employees die as the result of domestic violence homicides.

“Those are the calls we don’t want to get anymore,” she said.

The recommendations that came out of the Design Impact work are more general, Cummings said.

One suggestion is to give all employees an explanation of the company’s policies related to intimate partner violence when they start, she said.

That way people who are struggling with the issue don’t get singled out.

Design Impact created what Cummings calls a “visual map” that companies could use to explain polices and what employees should expect if they make supervisors aware of the problem.

Meghan Cummings, at podium, speaks at a Feb. 27 forum on intimate partner violence.

“Survivors share with us that employers often have the best intentions, but some of their interventions are not helpful at all,” Cumming said.

Hot spots

A male manager walking into a company parking lot to confront a violent husband, for example, could make things even worse for the employee the manager is trying to protect once that employee gets home, Shrimplin said.

The employers involved in the effort were open to what the survivors, especially, had to say, Corlett said.

“I was pleasantly surprised by the vulnerability and the willingness of employers in the room to stop and listen, admit where they were failing and where they could do better,” Corlett said.

One employer involved in the effort, for example, asked her home health care staff how many of them had experienced intimate partner violence. She was shocked to find that roughly 75 percent of her employees said they had, Cummings said.

“When we have low-wage jobs that are female-dominated at the lower socio-economic level, we think these are just real hot spots for this type of behavior,” she said.

That behavior ranges from intimidation or undermining efforts to get ahead all the way to physical violence.

Some survivors said their partners would turn off alarm clocks so they would be late for work or for job training, for example, while others said the physical abuse got worse as they got raises or promotions.

“I would hope that what the community is going to get now is action,” Shrimplin said.

That’s not to say employers can end intimate partner violence through office policies, she said, but employers must understand that there’s a business case for getting better at dealing with the problem.

“For corporate decision-makers, this is about bottom line,” she said, “and this is about productivity, and this is about retention and recruitment.”

Above all, Shrimplin said, employers must trust their employees to be the experts in what they need.

Those needs can be complicated when it comes to surviving an abusive relationship, Bankston added.

“Even when I got a divorce, and I intellectually felt it was the right thing to do, emotionally I felt like I had failed again,” Bankston said. “It’s just emotionally a horrible feeling on top of any smacks in the face or getting pushed down that you may also experience.”

More information about The Women’s Fund of the Greater Cincinnati Foundation is available online. Information about the Women Helping Women WorkStrong program is available online, too.

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WorkStrong United Way of Greater Cincinnati The Women's Fund of the Greater Cincinnati Foundation Cincinnati Domestic Violence Survivor Intimate Partner Domestic Violence

Local Number of Gender Base Violence Cases Increase

May 23 2023, www.wvxu.org

By Ann Thompson

Citing a growing number of reported gender-based violence cases in Greater Cincinnati, Women Helping Women President and CEO Kristin Smith Shrimplin says there is a disturbing pattern with the way victims are treated.

Smith Shrimplin spoke Thursday at the organization’s annual Community Leader breakfast at The Westin Cincinnati. She says Women Helping Women is not a political agency, only commenting on policy and actions that negatively affect survivors.

Referencing the #MeToo movement she said, “The national narrative has changed in its belief of survivors and its treatment of survivors. Supporting survivors is not open for political debate.”

“We have had enough of the fundamental disrespect and disregard, the violation and victimization in our region and in the U.S. of survivors,” Smith Shrimplin told a crowd that broke into applause.

The Numbers Continue To Go Up

So far in 2018, Women Helping Women says it served 5,939 survivors compared to a total of 5,792 in 2017. Smith Shrimplin says this is the new normal. This year a new team of volunteers, DVERT, is helping as they respond to calls with police and take survivors and their children to safe places.

Assistant Cincinnati Police Chief Michael John also spoke Thursday, citing numbers for the last three years. He says in 2015 there were 1,700 reports of gender-based violence; 1,800 in 2016; and 1,943 in 2017. Nine people died in 2017.

Gender-based violence on college campuses also continues to be a problem. Women Helping Women increased its services there by 60 percent.

At the Thursday breakfast, the organization also called for businesses to take on a greater role in identifying possible victims by participating in the program WorkStrong.

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#Me Too WorkStrong Cincinnati Domestic Violence Survivor Cincinnati Police Gender-Based Violence DVERT

Women Helping Women, Citing #MeToo Movement, Says “Enough Is Enough”

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