Sexual harassment of women at the workplace is a universal and pervasive phenomenon across cultures. The problem has assumed particular importance because of the increasing participation of women in the workforce.
In the last few decades, spurred by lived experience narratives of women who had experienced sexual harassment at the workplace, sustained movements, campaigns, advocacy by working women, gender activists, human rights activists, lawyers, the affected persons themselves and recent global movements such as #Metoo and #Times up have succeeded in bringing this issue out if the closet into the public domain. These narratives reveal that contrary to popular belief, sexual harassment is not an exception but the norm! The narratives also highlight that not only women, but non binary individuals and men also experience workplace sexual harassment and perpetrator can be a person of any gender.
In India, the lived experience of Bhanwari Devi, a social worker in a remote village in Rajasthan who was gang raped in 1992, was the precedent for creating safe workspaces for women free of sexual harassment. Her courageous stance to speak up openly about her experience led to the Vishaka Guidelines on sexual harassment has empowered millions of Indian women to work safely and given them the confidence to report any incident of sexual harassment in the workplace.
Sixteen years later, based on the Vishaka Guidelines, The Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act 2013 (“the Act”) was enacted to provide protection against sexual harassment of women at workplace and for the prevention and redressal of complaints of sexual harassment and for matter connected therewith or incidental thereto.
Sexual harassment of women is a form of gender-based violence. It not only violates their self-esteem, self-respect and dignity but robs them of their basic human and Constitutional rights. Although it cannot be termed a recent and new phenomenon, rapid changes in the workplace and women’s increased workforce participation has thrown up such inequities in glaring and not so glaring dimensions. However, the stigma, shame, secrecy and silence around the issue prevents most survivors/victims to not report the incident; accounting for gross underreporting.
Sexual harassment has received little systematic attention and study in our country despite the multiple adverse effects on both women and employers. Informed awareness and nuanced perspectives on this issue is still non-existent or minimal at best. In order to effectively address this problem and make workspaces safe, inclusive and free of sexual harassment, there needs to be a zero tolerance policy toward this complex issue. This, however, is as much attitudinal as it is legislative. The Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) is an international instrument that contextualizes human rights standards to the situation of women and India having ratified the treaty is bound to implement its objectives.
SISA workspaces
In recent years, the concept of Safe Inclusive Supportive and Sexually Affirmative (SISA) workspaces is increasingly being heard in workplaces.
Based on the principles of gender diversity, equity and inclusion, a SISA workspace is Safe from judgment, policing, harassment and violence; Inclusive of diverse identities and experiences; and Sexuality-Affirming (affirming of sexuality and sexual and reproductive rights from a choice and rights based perspective). A SISA space is free from sexual harassment in any form, has robust mechanisms in place to address and prevent its incidence of gender and sexuality based discrimination and violence.
Most importantly, a SISA space has a gender inclusive approach to understanding and preventing sexual harassment. It recognises that all genders can be perpetrators and victims of sexual harassment.
A sexual harasser can be anyone at or affiliated with your workplace. This could be your direct supervisor, a supervisor in another department, a co-worker, or even a client, a customer, a vendor or a contractor. The gender of the harasser does not matter. Harassment is harassment.
Watch this space to read Dr. Nandini Murali discuss different facets of a topic in series over a month. Offering a 360-degree view, she takes readers into the different dimensions through anecdotes, backing them with data.
