"No bed of roses: The Kenyan flower pickers fighting sexual harassment"

Female flower pickers in Kenya can face many hardships in their work - often finding themselves victims of sexual harassment or earning a wage so low they struggle to get by - but initiatives are in place to try to improve the workers' rights....Julia...has a busy day ahead, picking roses on the local flower farm, and she wants to impress her new manager. "It was an opportunity I couldn't refuse," she explains..."Regular work, a school nearby and a new home. Here in rural Kenya, there isn't anything else for women like me."...

"Men complain that when we wear skirts, they feel like having sex with us. We have to be careful," says Julia. "That's why it's important that I am dressed appropriately." Julia, who does not want to give her last name, recently left a role on a farm nearby after she refused to have sex with her male supervisor. She is hopeful that her new job on a farm certified by Fairtrade International will offer more protection...

Aware of the frequency of incidents of sexual assault, Fairtrade has set up a gender committee on each of its 39 flower farms in Kenya, which encourages women to report violations. Tsitsi Choruma, global gender adviser and chief operating officer for Fairtrade Africa, believes these structures are necessary to ensure harassment is reported.