2 women harassed at workplace daily in 2017: Panel

BENGALURU: Officially, about two women were harassed at their workplace in India every day so far in 2017, with the National Commission for Women (NCW) receiving an average of 1.7 complaints per day. In the 316 days between January 1 and December 12, the commission received 539 complaints, 60% of which were from five states: Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Haryana.

However, the cases reported to the NCW represent only the tip of the iceberg. According to sexual harassment laws, complaints are first expected to be addressed by an internal complaints committee or district complaints committee in the case of unorganized sector workers. The complainant then has a choice to approach the state women's commission or national commission for redress. However, in many cases victims don't complain because the committee has either not been set up or is not considered effective.



Cumulative data for four years from 2014 shows a similar trend with the NCW receiving 1.8 complaints per day on average. In four years, 1,971 complaints were received by the commission.

SC advocate K V Dhananjay says one major problem with the existing system is that there are no penalties for committees within companies not acting on complaints, or in many cases further harassing the victims.

"Eight out of 10 firms do not have a functional committee. While the big ones are more sincere in putting in place a system, the majority of them fail in addressing the concerns of women, and no legal action is taken," he says.

Three months ago, after the Karnataka Women's Commission (KWC) ensured action against a supervisor of a garments firm in Bengaluru, 11 other women complained of harassment by the same man for several months.

KWC chairperson Nagalakshmi Bai says majority of complaints come from technology firms. "There are two kinds of harassment, professional and sexual, and I've seen many cases that began as professional harassment and eventually ended up as sexual," she says, adding that it is important to improve prevention mechanisms.

Despite the introduction of redressal systems - POSH (Policy on Prevention of Sexual Harassment) and Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013 - sociologist Samata Deshmane argues that women continue to refrain from filing complaints as most workplaces are still dominated by men and victims are often harassed for raising such issues.

Priya Chetty Rajagopal, CXO search consultant and a member of sexual harassment committees in three big firms in Bengaluru, however, says: "Now there is more visibility to such victims and hopefully we will have more people coming forward and reporting cases." Agreeing with Bai that prevention is the way forward, Priya says most people are not aware of the rules and systems that exist now. In fact, they can take the matter to the labour department if companies fail to act on harassment.