The Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Addressal) Act 2013, has yet to take its roots within organizations and its implications understood. For the first time, women can now fall back on a tool that is both powerful and empowering. The irony however is that very few women know about this right they possess and even more devastating is that very few men understand its implications.
Although the guidelines to be followed by establishments in dealing with complaints about sexual harassment was in place almost ten years ago, till date women have failed to understand the potency of the act.
This act has come out of a long battle for women rights. A pinnacle of this movement was a most disturbing and humiliating legal battle in the Rajasthan high court. An employee of the Rajasthan state government who tried to prevent child marriage as part of her work was brutally gang raped by a group of educated and upper class males as a lesson to her audacious intervention. Even though the law provided for addressable of sexual harassment under Section 354 and sections 509 of the Indian Penal Code, these men went scot free and justice denied only because of the pitfalls in the system.
The outrage of this injustice was filed as a public interest litigation in the Supreme Court of India in 1997 by a women’s right group called Vishaka. This was the cornerstone to the present SHW Act. In response to this litigation, the Supreme Court passed a landmark judgment in laying down guidelines to be followed by establishments in dealing with complaints about sexual harassment. These guidelines were to be implemented until legislation was passed to deal with the issue.
These guidelines were then worked through with the help of a special committee comprising of the National Commission for women and other women right groups. Heed was taken to make sure to include the unorganised sector and to incorporate provisions of the labor law. The Sexual Harassment of Women at the Workplace (Prevention and Redressal) Bill, 2004 was then introduced in Parliament. This bill remained in abeyance for almost ten years. With the fervor that followed the Nirbaya case, the bill once again received its due attention. Finally on April 22, 2013, The Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Addressal) Act 2013, was published in The Gazette of India, Ministry Of Laws And Justice.
The act does not only consider the outrageous explicit sex crimes but also considers implicit sexual insensitivity. One of the difficulties people face, both men and women, in trying to decipher this law within the boundaries of human interaction is tied closely to the psychosocial environment that we have created about sex. The aim of this law is to bring about a mindset change of perceiving women as sexual objects. Yes, we are sexual beings but we are also human being that think, feel and express. In the same way that gender equality is governed by sociocultural expectations, sexual expression are also largely governed by our sociocultural expectations. For centuries a woman in India has been reared to believe that she is less than her male counterpart. A woman who asserts herself or makes the first move in a relationship is perceived as aggressive or even domineering
Activists fighting for the cause of sexual harassment of women are seen as men-hating -asexual beings, but the truth is this fight is not so much about sex as it is about sensitivity. The many myths that exists about sexual harassment is the reason why this act is often taken very lightly and the reason why even educated and intelligent men could find themselves in a situation as an offender. Many men and women see eve-teasing as harmless flirtation. Women who object are said to have no sense of humor. But there is a great difference between healthy welcomed flirtation and unwelcomed advances. There are many cues that women give to show their discomfort. But of course we also believe in one of the most ironic myths of all that when a woman says ‘No’ she does not really mean it. Such patriarchal mindset begins with men who justify sexual aggression and one-sided sexual advances.
We shift the blame from the perpetrator to the victim by blaming the women’s dressing sense. Men will be men and so we want to believe, but the truth is that unwelcomed sexual advances are learned and we are not born with patriarchal control over women's sexuality, fertility and labor
We also believe that women who keep quiet and don’t retaliate are actually enjoying the attention. Again our basis is a classic patriarchy mind-set that sees women as subordinate. The truth is that women often don’t retaliate because they don’t want negative attention or the provocation of such retaliation.
The imbalance needs to shift. Nobody denies the fact that men are not sexually harassed but the way women react to sexual harassment within their work place is very different form the way men would react. The SHW aims to inculcate a sensitivity to gender inequality with zero tolerance.
