Every organisation manages risk.

Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) has evolved significantly over the past three decades, helping organisations better understand financial, operational, legal, cyber and other strategic risks. Yet assessing organisational risk through a structured gender risk lens remains a relatively new area of organisational practice.

This is not because organisations do not care.

It is because some risks are inherently difficult to see.

Gender-based violence and harassment (GBVH), discrimination, unequal access to opportunities and workplace behaviours that become normalised over time do not always appear on a risk register until harm has already occurred. By then, organisations are often responding to grievances, legal disputes, reputational damage or declining employee trust rather than preventing those risks in the first place.

The challenge is not always commitment.

The challenge is visibility.

How do organisations identify risks that employees may be reluctant to report? How do leaders distinguish between isolated incidents and systemic organisational risks? How do organisations identify workplace hazards before they become organisational risks?

These are increasingly important questions for boards, executives and governance professionals.

Traditional approaches such as policies, awareness campaigns, training and compliance initiatives remain essential. They create awareness, strengthen organisational culture and provide important safeguards. However, they do not necessarily provide leaders with a structured understanding of where gender-related workplace risks exist, how significant those risks may be or where intervention is required most.

As governance expectations continue to evolve, organisations are increasingly expected to move beyond responding to incidents and towards proactively identifying, assessing and managing risks before they escalate.

Recognising this need, Shared Value Africa has spent the past two years researching, developing and refining the Gender Risk Assessment Compliance Indicator (GRACI) – a governance, compliance and risk assessment methodology designed to help organisations identify, assess and manage workplace gender-based violence and harassment risks.

Over the past two years, and following six months of testing, challenging and refining the methodology with private sector business leaders—GRACI has evolved to ensure it reflects the realities organisations face rather than remaining a purely theoretical model.

Our ambition is not simply to introduce another methodology.

It is to contribute to a broader conversation about how organisations identify and manage gender-related workplace risks as part of strengthening governance, accountability and risk-informed decision-making.

Because before organisations can manage risk, they must first be able to see it.

And perhaps that is the most important conversation organisations should be having as they prepare for Women’s Month.

Coming August 2026
Introducing the Gender Risk Assessment Compliance Indicator (GRACI) – a governance, compliance and risk assessment methodology for identifying, assessing and managing workplace gender-based violence and harassment risks.