Sexual Harassment of Women at workplace - Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal

The Need Imagine working with a Damocles sword hanging over your head every day. Unfortunately for many of the working women they don’t have to imagine it as they live it every day. It is only in recent times that our society has in principle taken steps to remove this constant threat hanging over a working women’s head. In India this came in the form of enactment and bringing into force Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013. However for this idea to be translated from paper into reality of making working places safe for women requires constant attention and committed effort to get there.

This Act becomes particularly significant to Corporate India as the proportion of female population in their workforce is constantly increasing. Further, the Act has made it mandatory for them to disclose cases of sexual harassment registered during the financial year in their annual report.

Coverage The ambit of this act is far reaching as it extends coverage to all women, including women who happen to visit the establishment for any purpose whatsoever. Further the definition of sexual harassment is also widened to include implied or explicit promise of preferential or detrimental treatment in employment, threat about present or future employment status and creating an intimidating or hostile workplace to affect their health and safety. While our focus here is on corporates, the Act covers all establishment or employers having ten or more employees. A key aspect of this Act is to define a uniform mechanism to handle complaints of sexual harassment across all establishments. Headed by a senior level women employee, the committee to handle cases of sexual harassment, which is required to have half its members as women is also required to have a representative from an NGO as it member. This constitution is intended primarily to give the victim confidence to bring up their grievance and have them redressed.

This committee will not only take cognizance of the written complaint made by the aggrieved women but will also help in framing the complaint where required. This committee even has the discretion to extend the prescribed time limit of three months for filing such complaints. Further, they also have the power to transfer the aggrieved woman or the respondent to any other workplace, or grant leave up to three months leave to the aggrieved woman or provide any other such relief. All these provisions are intended to surface the latent problems faced by women and have them redressed at the earliest. Given that working women could have foregone economic benefits as a result of sexual harassment at workplace, the Act provides for compensation where the allegation is proved, which is to be recovered from the perpetrator of the crime. This compensation is over and above action taken that would be taken under the service rules. Further in computing compensation, mental trauma, pain, suffering and emotional distress caused, Loss of career opportunity due to the incident and the income and financial status of the victim is required to be considered.

Implementation

On the implementation front, the employer who is mandated to provide a safe working environment at the workplace is required to among others display at any conspicuous place in the workplace, the penal consequence of sexual harassment and the order constituting the internal committee. Additionally, they are also required to organize workshops and programs for sensitizing the employees with the provisions of the Act.

Employer should provide such facilities as required by the committee for conducting enquiry like securing the attendance of the respondent/ witness, provide assistance to aggrieved women to file complaint under the penal code, treat sexual harassment as misconduct under service rules and also monitor and take action on the report submitted by the committee.

Every establishment or employer, which includes the Corporates is required to include in their Annual report the number of cases filed under the sexual harassment act, if any, and its disposal. Where such report is not required to be made, the employer is required to intimate the number of cases received to the district officer. However this requirement to report on statistics of the cases does not infringe on the privacy of the victim as the contents of the complaint, identity and address of the aggrieved women, respondent and witness or any other information related inquiry, conciliation, proceeding settlement, or recommendation of the internal committee / action taken by the employer are specifically prohibited from being published or made known to public, press and media in any manner.

Where the employer contravenes any of the provisions of the Act, they shall be punished with a fine which may extend to fifty thousand rupees. In case of repeated contraventions, they shall be liable to twice the punishment imposed on the first conviction or such higher punishment as prescribed under any other law.

2014-15: First Year Implementation A report in the Economic Times in September highlighted the fact that 2/3rd of Nifty companies had reported cases of sexual harassment in 2014-15. The report further stated that 46 of the Nifty Companies showed a total of 415 cases with 80% of such disclosure coming from IT and banking sectors, which have a larger proportion of women employees. The list is headed by the IT giant WIPRO reporting 100 cases followed by the banking major ICICI. In the manufacturing sector TATA Steel leads with 24 cases. In sharp contrast other Nifty giants like HDFC, L&T and Coal India among others have reported not having received a single case of sexual harassment during the year.

With the regulators having clearly putting the onus on self-regulation and disclosure, women employee’s safety and security must not be merely assessed on the number of cases registered but on the mechanisms provided to redress such cases. We are still at the early stage of a new era as far as this enactment goes and the main challenge may not just be the will to implement but could also be lack of trained human resources to handle such cases with sensitivity.

Unfortunately, despite this new enactment the social stigma attached to a person filing sexual harassment cases in our society still persists. Sensitizing employees and conducting periodic awareness campaigns remain the key to providing a safe and sustainable work environment for women. In addition, creating an environment wherein women can report sexual harassment without fear of further harassment or adverse effect on their employment, or possible defamation requires strong and committed leadership in every corporate enterprise.

I believe Company Secretaries as key managerial personnel should play a significant role in making this happen.

Author: CS Aruna Kannan, Company Secretary in Practice