“It was beaten by her husband”: how companies can protect women victims of domestic violence

He has not forgotten this call telling him that one of his employees “would not come because she was beaten by her husband.” It wasn’t the first time. One in two women, a victim of domestic violence is an employee, a social reality that forces employers.

The director of two stores in U cooperative in Loir-Et-Cher, “fell from the clouds”, she, who knew her 200 employees, “did not know that Juliette* had personal problems.”

When Isabelle Bodin received it: “I told him what existed with us, the telephone numbers of the victim of France, of the psychologists. I told him about the Gendarierie, the presentation of the complaint. The store gives him” days of exceptional license, “he warns of the security guard if his former Russian comes,” Isabelle said.

“These victims are in our teams”

Fortunately, your business has a good practical guide, written by psychologist Satya Goetz Lancel, to react in this type of case. “We authorize the absences paid to present a complaint during their work hours, we call the Gendarmerie or the police station before the employee arrives to be better received,” explains the psychologist.

A label for companies that protect

“Among the victims who have filed a complaint, 62% are salaried,” says the National Association of Human Resources Directors (Andrh). “These figures underline a reality too often: the world of work is directly worried,” said its president, Audrey Richard.

With this observation, Andrh, Canal+Group, France Work, Havas, Mediawan or Vivendi and brands such as Ba & Sh or Celine have just joined the “Safe Place” label, created by the association “125 and then”, to support employees victims of domestic violence.

To obtain this label, companies must propose three concrete actions to help victims of domestic violence (and another the following year). Among the solutions: authorize employees to go and present a complaint about their working time.

“When you suffer from coercive control, you never have three hours in your free time on Saturday afternoon, to go to the police station, while if you have the excuse of being at work, it is very different, since the company can become a legal alibi,” explains the president of the Sarah Barukh association to Franceinfo.

At the moment, a dozen companies have this CSR label. And they are not the only ones who understand the subject. The post, for example, established very early measures to support employees victims of domestic violence. They can get significantly days of license, emergency housing or even a transfer.

“She told him that he left him and that he killed her.”

But sometimes it is too late to act. As Romain Brulière, leader of Hyper U of Villefranche-de-Lauragais, near Toulouse: “A young employee of 25 years of Algerian origin, who had a residence permit and whose partner told him that he would send her back to his country if he left him, he was killed. It was in March 202,” recalls his employer.

“In my teams, the reality of violence is there,” he laments. “It is a mainly feminine young population, which unfortunately had the opportunity to get Eagble and that everything cannot afford and leave.”

Some 271,000 victims of domestic violence, the vast majority of women, were registered by security forces in 2023. The same year, 96 marital women were also identified.