Sexual abuse at workplace

According to a recent survey, 17 percent of Indian working women still face sexual harassment at workplace

Despite all tall talks of women emerging as an equally powerful workforce as men in our country, the grim fact remains that they are often discriminated and harassed at workplaces. A new survey conducted in major cities in the country by Oxfam India and the Social and Rural Research Institute reveals that as many as 17 percent of working women in India have experienced sexual harassment at their workplace.

As per the survey, about 17 percent of working women in India feel that they have experienced acts of sexual harassment at workplace, indicating a high incidence of sexual harassment among working women from both the organised and unorganised sectors. However, majority of women said they had faced incidents that were non-physical.

The survey says that 66 of the 400 respondents faced a cumulative of 121 incidents of sexual harassment. A total of 102 out of 121 incidents were reported to be non-physical, whereas the remaining 19 incidents were physical in nature.

While 87 percent of the general population and 93 percent of working women respondents reported awareness of sexual harassment of women at work place, a majority of the victims did not resort to any formal action against the perpetrator.

According to the report, maximum number of sexual harassment cases was reported among labourers (29 percent), domestic helps (23 percent) and small-scale manufacturing units (16 percent).

A report in a national daily quoted Oxfam India CEO Nisha Agrawal as saying: “Violence against women is a human rights violation, whether it is domestic violence within homes or sexual harassment at the workplace. We believe in the right of every woman to a violence free workplace."

Women working in the unorganised sectors are more vulnerable to sexual harassment due to lack of awareness of legislation. Economic problems often add to the misery at workplace.  The report sites some of the reasons for not taking any such action were "fear of losing job", "absence of any complaints mechanism at the workplace", "fear of getting stigmatized", and "not aware of redressal mechanism".