She Speaks is an original Shenomics’ series of dialogues between leading women from various disciplines on relevant issues pertaining to professional women in India. Disclaimer: All views contained in this article represent the individual’s personal views, and not those of any organization with which they might be affiliated.
Sexual harassment is a serious concern at the workplace in India. A survey by the Indian National Bar Association (INBA) conducted in early 2017 found that of the 6,047 participants (both male and female), 38% said they had faced harassment at the workplace. Of these, 69% did not complain about it, as cited by a report by digital news portal Quartz. In 2013, the Rajya Sabha passed the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, making it mandatory for companies to institute an Internal Complaints committee (IC) to handle complaints from employees, as well as conduct trainings frequently.
Antony Alex, CEO of Rainmaker, a startup that has developed e-training modules on sexual harassment for companies and Asha Sivashankar, an independent Human Resource consultant shed light on corporate India’s stand on the matter in a freewheeling chat moderated by Shonali Advani.
How awakened is corporate India with respect to sexual harassment at the workplace?
Asha Sivashankar: I was working with human resources from 2013 – 2016 and this was a critical time when the PoSH Act gained prominence. We implemented policies with great vigor in our organization. As a staffing company we had people deployed all over and to whatever extent I interacted with those companies, most being large ones, I saw they had basics in place; some kind of a policy and an internal complaints committee. Whether they were training people or reporting cases the way it needed to be done, I can’t comment on.
Antony Alex: In our experience, as a startup that helps companies comply with the law, medium to large companies have done whatever it takes from a ‘check the box’ perspective. Large corporates are fully in compliance. Unfortunately, there are very few companies taking genuine steps to sensitize the workforce. I think corporate India needs to do a lot more to crack down on it. They don’t want to do more or spend much cash on it either. All the messaging needs to happen in a more vigorous fashion.
Asha: If you look at some cases in India as well as Uber, you are beginning to see a theme there.
Antony: Sexual harassment is rampant. The only good thing now is that what went unchecked or not in media is changing. We are seeing a lot of publicity around it thanks to social media as well.
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