Monday, Sep 27, 2004
Harassment of Women at Workplace Quite Prevalent
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Sexual harassment at work place was quite prevalent but the victims refrained from lodging a complaint fearing social disgrace and loss of work, head of Ahmedabad Women's Action Group (AWAG), a non-government organisation has said.
"Sexual harassment exists in several fields whether it is government, private sector, medicine or even lawyers but nobody wants to say so," AWAG head Ila Pathak said.
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"When women take up jobs, it often evokes negative response from male colleagues, who perceive that their domain is being attacked. In retaliation they strive to regain control by power poaching. Sexual behaviour is often the focus of the same," Pathak added.
A survey conducted by AWAG indicated that about 48 per cent of women said they experienced sexually inapropriate behaviour at work place. The nature of harassment included verbal, psychological and physical.
The perepetrators of harassment are usually co-workers or immediate superiors.
Despite the Supreme Court taking a serious view of sexual harassment cases in 1997 and directing the states to form committees to deal with complaints of female employees, few states have complied with the apex court's order properly.
On a petition filed by a woman in Ahmedabad recently in High Court, alleging that such committees did not exist in Gujarat, the court asked the government to file an affidavit.
In its affidavit, the government said the state-level committee was formed in 1998 with Anuradha Mansingh as chairperson.
After its term ended, another committee was formed in November 2000 under S K Verma, who however refused to head the committee.
Then Dr Manjula Subramanyam was appointed in her place on February 2001, but she also refused to head the committee.
Then the Commissioner of Women and Child Development was appointed as the chairperson in June 2001. Nothing much has happened since then.
About reasons for sexual harassment at work, Pathak said the AWAG survey indicated that women respondents feel that there are two main causes. One is the attitude of men who take women for granted and another is gender role difference in the society.
The male response, however, differs substantially in the survey, she said, adding that most of them (men) attribute it to influence of western media, provocative outfits of women and unecessary friendly behaviour by them.
Most of the women suffer and do not complain fearing loss of job. A lady medical representative who had to face sexual harassment from her immediate boss tried to make a collective representation before the head of the company.
The result was that she was not only humiliated but also thrown out of job and till date she has not got a new job as the previous company gives a bad opinion about the girl when the company approaches them for appriasal.
However, Pathak denies the situation is gloomy, saying a number of government departments in Ahmedabad such as Income Tax, Sales Tax, BSNL have instituted a complaint committee which is headed by woman.
Credits
Original Source of the article: DDI NewsM
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