An eye opener on sexual harassment at workplace in India

 

 The Rapid growth and advancement in the corporate sector of the Indian work space has a silent casualty for it needs to ensure substantive measures and industry or corporate level policies to safeguard the interest of employee, particularly against sexual harassment

 

 Discrimination and gender inequality or firmly rooted in our society and it would be naive and it would be wrong to assume that Posh office complexes and glass building canopies are invincible to these kind of wrong practices.

 

 India stands bleak for it is just waking up to the seriousness of this issue. Over the last few years we have seen several top management heads of various organizations  accused of sexual harassment.

 

 The lack of proper mechanism to address or prevent sexual harassment issues has been in the forefront of any debate. In this regard the fact that only 526 cases of sexual harassment at workplace were reported in the year 2014. Of which only 10% were reported at office premises which simply highlights the big gap that exist even to accept, acknowledge or identify and report of a sexual harassment episode.

 

 In various services on work related sexual harassment, in the year 2010, India recorded one of the highest incidence of sexual harassment and these results where corroborated by The Center for transforming India survey that showed almost  90% of Indian working women who were surveyed accepted and acknowledged that some form of workplace sexual harassment happens invariably during their work time.

 

In 1996 the Supreme Court of India created a set of guidelines meant to deal with this issue and the important aspect of these guidelines was the establishment of ICC ( internal complaints committee ) which should be headed by a woman in every organization.

 

Even though article 141 of the constitution give the guidelines legitimacy, the reality is that it was absent from the books and there was no sanctions which are in the guidelines and it was never followed.

 

When Tehelkha magazine founder Tarun Tejpal accused of sexually assaulting a women employee it brought the whole thing into Limelight  with the media  showing it as prime time news.

 

Similar thing happened in a finance company a Mumbai based organization, where when a woman employee filing a complaint on sexual harassment, not only did the financial institution blatantly deny the charge but went on to Harass the complainant further and ensured she left the organization

 

Thus many corporates of India have very limited knowledge or interest to deal with such issues and when a complaint arises on sexual harassment, they simply jump to their Self defense whatever be the case ,without going to the merits of such cases.

 

The incident only highlights the fact that corporate in India closed on such issues and the Act on PoSH is an eye opener on sexual harassment at workplace in India. This further illustrates that they develop a hostile work environment in the event of a complaint by a victim and make  victims  life miserable  and insulate organization with namesake notifications and compliance to Laws, rather than making proper awareness programs in their organizations’

 

Studies done in India by various authorized agencies are simply concluded. The findings are that majority of women respondents does not want to complain, as they don't have confidence in the Redressal mechanism and hence wants to simply forget or bury the sexual harassment episode under the carpet and move on. Majority of them resign from their job and go on to another one where also similar problem persists.

 

However it can never be denied that sexual harassment is growing yet not properly accounted . The women employees of the country due to  misinformation, ignorance, stigma attached and other social pressures make the very idea of sexual harassment complaint never coming to the forefront in workplace by the affected individual.

 

It is important for the industry to consciously strengthen their policies and their Vision and Mission and ensure that they educate their employees and stick to the policies as per the act in action and not Just in paper but in Spirit also.

 

It is important to note that as long as men and women co-exist and work together, such issues can always happen and it is only important for the top management to realize the problem and ensure a proper prevention prohibition and Redressal mechanism as mandated by the posh Act 2013 and ensure the safety of women and make them the pride of India in workplace.