MOSCOW, July 18 (RIA Novosti) – Violence against women is a serious issue for businesses, the Canadian Broadcasting Company reported, citing research by Canada’s Prince Edward Island University MBA student Michelle Harris-Genge.
“In the United States, 10 percent of women (11,886,000) have missed at least one day of work or school as a result of intimate partner violence. At minimum, using a 7.5-hour workday as a measurement, this equates to 89,145,000 hours of missed work due to family violence,” the report states.
The study is based on the number of intimate partner violence, violent crimes, harassment and sexual assaults women in Canada and the United States experience each year.
The report concluded that large companies such as Google lose more than $4,600,000 per year due to domestic violence.
The study highlighted that the majority of workplaces lack a formal policy for dealing with domestic abuse and outlined steps the companies should take in order to reduce the costs of domestic violence.
According to the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, the intimate partner violence in the United States accounts for over 50 percent of female murder victims.
Annual costs of intimate partner violence in the United States exceed $5.8 billion, $4.1 billion of which is for direct medical and mental health services.
