THE current political crisis has spiked a surge in (sexual) harassment, discrimination and abuse, particularly against young women workers who are more likely to experience this at work and in society.

Being disproportionately represented in low-paid, insecure and precarious jobs makes young women even more vulnerable as their access to adequate support and reporting structures, as well as trade union organising that could campaign against such issues, is reduced. This is no accident, but created by design under class society.

We are living through an epidemic of violence against women and girls in the workplace, campuses and communities. Every year, more than two million women and girls are victims of sexual harassment and almost 700,000 are sexually assaulted.

The workplace is no safe space for women as a Unite the Union survey in 2025 found that 25 per cent of women had been sexually assaulted at work; 55 per cent had experienced sexually offensive jokes in the workplace and 75 per cent had not reported assault or harassment.

Behind these statistics lies a huge deluge in misogyny both online and offline.

Internationally we are seeing big moves to roll back women’s rights and, in Britain, the likes of Reform UK has embraced these moves with open arms, particularly on abortion rights and against the Employment Rights Act, which strengthened legislation combatting sexual harassment in the workplace.

Sexism is not a minor issue to be dismissed and ignored, therefore the labour movement must be organised and prepared to tackle it.

To tackle violence against women and girls, we must first understand the roots of this epidemic in the integral role of women’s oppression in class exploitation.

Women’s oppression and class society’s common origins begin in the development of private property. From capitalism’s birth, women’s unpaid labour in the home and super-exploitation in the workplace has maintained the system by creating super-profits for the ruling capitalist class, and rearing and maintaining generations of workers.

Economic super-exploitation forms the structural level of women’s oppression, but it does not explain why and how women’s oppression is maintained and reproduced. The superstructural level of oppression explains this, ie, the ideologies that maintain class rule.

Sexist ideologies operate on multiple levels, including the explicit misogyny of those promoting toxic masculinity and openly advocating violence against women and girls.

As well as the societal expectations and norms assigned to masculinity and femininity reproduced through state institutions, education and media. This is why women are shoehorned into low-paid, insecure and precarious work where they are more at risk of harassment, discrimination and abuse because the poor treatment of them is accepted as normal due to these sexist ideologies.

These ideologies limit the potential of both men and women and are the root cause of violence against women and girls.

Women’s organisations both within and outside the labour movement have a long proud tradition of campaigning against violence against women and girls and much more. Women workers have led the struggle for issues that cut across class lines, including ending violence and for safety at work.

These issues are, of course, more keenly felt by women workers, who cannot afford to buy their way out of these difficulties.

Some women may be prepared to fight for women’s issues without linking them to the wider interests of the labour movement or struggle for socialism. Simultaneously, the labour movement has too often separated women’s issues from its own movement, causing damaging separatism too. Both present a challenge to unity in the struggle against violence against women and girls in society and at work, and weaken both movements.

The labour movement weakens itself if it dismisses and ignores women’s issues.

Young trade unionists cannot allow the historical seepage of capitalist values on misogyny to persist. Some men might welcome women’s issues being hived off into a separate domain, outsourced from trade union organising. This is totally unacceptable.

Unity is not achieved by denying the differences between workers but by understanding them in order to eradicate their causes.

Women’s interests are best served by both a strong women’s movement and an organised labour movement with massive female involvement. We achieve that by campaigning and organising on the major issues that affect women at work and in society.

Sexual harassment in the workplace is the logical conclusion of an ideology that maintains and reproduces the super-exploitation and oppression of women. This is why women’s issues should be at the heart of trade unionism.

Young women workers want and need a movement that understands the roots of their oppression and is able to act on those causes in order to truly liberate women, because the liberation of the working class is not possible without the liberation of women.

Maise Riley is Unison Eastern Young Members Forum co-chair.