Hyderabad: State offices or private firm, sex abuse on rise

Hyderabad: It’s certainly just the tip of the iceberg, but some 665 employers have been booked under IPC Section 509 (Word, gesture or act intended to insult the modesty of a woman), across the country. 

The spectrum of sexual harassment at the workplace is wide and women employees are subjected to all its forms from staring at her breasts touching her shoulders, hands, legs, nudging her back, rubbing up against her, cracking sexually explicit jokes in her presence, forcing her to stay after working hours, sitting in her cabin/pod/cubical or desk without permission, grabbing her in the corridor or lift, calling women to guest houses for extra work or interview, blacking them to have an intimate moment. If they refuse or complain they are harassed till they quit.

According to the data submitted by the Ministry of Women and Child Welfare, the most cases of sexual misconduct have been reported in the corporate and government sectors. Surprisingly, the Ministry of Corporate Affairs has not been disclosing internal complaints filed with the internal complaints committees (ICCs), in the Annual Report of the Companies, even though the Ministry of Women and Child Welfare has made it mandatory to do so. The reason for not disclosing complaints against male employers is fear of damaging the brand/company.  

Anish Verma, a corporate employee who has done research on sexual harassment in companies, says that the number of reported complaints are higher in IT companies as compared to other firms. “According to data published by companies, Wipro between 2016-17 reported 116 cases of sexual harassment, Infosys, 88, Tata Consultancy, 65, Kotak Mahindra Bank, 19, SBI, 21, Tata Steel, 26, Mahindra & Mahindra, 4, Bharti Aitel, 5, and Cipla, 3.

Says Shalini Desai who works for a private company, “Women are scanned from top to bottom at the workplace. They are added into official whatApp groups sans consent, and this is how her contact is exposed and then the lewd messages follow. Women are often told that they bagged the job because of their beauty (body) and not brains. Most companies will assert that a large number of such complaints have been effectively ‘resolved’ but in reality, they have brushed them aside with a warning to the alleged accused.”

"Cases of sexual harassment are coming to light because we have a grievance system in place and now with the explosive MeToo campaign, the perpetrators will be exposed more," says Dr Purnima Nagaraja, consultant psychiatrist at Dhrithi. 

She says it is "important to note that only 30 per cent of women bring the issue to light while 70 per cent of cases are buried owing to fear of losing the job. Particularly in India, a female is looked upon as an accused despite being the victim and the woman is questioned for her choice of clothes, behaviour, extrovert nature and judged on all moral grounds when she complains and thus women prefer not to report."

She echoes what many women feel: "The jokes on the social media posts on the MeToo movement are disgusting. This shows the resurgence of patriarchy. But no matter how late it may be - 10, 15 or 20 years since the incident - women should definitely speak out," she says.