Violence against Women and
Sexual Harassment at Work Places-Issues and Policies
Mr. Bhagwati Prasad Chaudhary
Research Scholar, Department of Commerce and
Management, Andhra University, Vishakhapatnam
*Corresponding Author E-mail: bhagwatii.chaudhary@gmail.com
ABSTRACT:
This
paper deals with the issues related to violence against women and sexual
harassment at work places as this has emerged as one of the major noticeable
Human Resource Management issues at work place. This paper summarizes the
extensive literatures available on this issue in India. The women's
participation in the economic sector is crucial for their economic empowerment
and sustainability as well as for the development of the economies. However,
problems such as sexual harassment and different kinds of violence against
women in the workplace discourage them to join the economic sectors and for the
continuation of their job tenure. It is
increasingly being recognized as a violation of human rights and human dignity,
which undermines equality of opportunity and treatment between men and women.
As women's participation is growing in employment sectors, the prohibition of
sexual harassment is necessary to ensure safe and healthy working environment.
The violence against women and sexual harassment at work place causes
psychological and physical injuries to the human resources and affects
negatively to the organizational effectiveness and productivity of an
organization as these leads to higher absenteeism, employee turnover, and lower
employees’ morale. Hence, there is a need to look upon this matter sincerely
and seriously by the concerned authorities such as policy makers of the organizations
and government. Proper mechanisms should be developed to deal with these
issues. The goal must be to nullify any kinds of violence against women and
sexual harassment at work settings or elsewhere. In addition to that this paper
brings down some of the best practices of the corporations to check the
violence against women and sexual harassment at workplace.
KEY WORDS: Violence against women, Sexual harassment at
workplaces, Productivity, psychological and physical injuries, Government
Policy on sexual harassment.
Violence against women and sexual
harassment at the workplace has emerged as the major noticeable Human Resource
Management issues at work place around the globe. Organizations are social
components and are getting affected by social factors directly and indirectly.
Sexual harassment is a social problem, emerging as a vital issue in the
workplaces which is needed attention and proactive Human resource management
intervention by the top level management. In totality, it is an offense against
the dignity of a human being. Sexual harassment is one of those offenses, which
leave a long-term impact on the victims and highly affects healthy work
environment. It is a hazard encountered
in workplaces for women, which reduce the quality of working life, jeopardizes
the well-being of women, undermines gender equality and caused heavy loss to
the organizations. Society and organizations work together. They interact and
affect each other continuously. Hence,
social culture influences greatly to workplace culture. Sexual harassment at
work place has been in the spotlight for the last several years. So far,
extensive researches have been carried out on this phenomenon and many
literatures have been created around the world. This has become a hot corporate
cake on the media for the last 2 decades. Even though, widespread publicity is
done about its perils, organizations are still exhibiting a surprisingly casual
attitude about the problems. Modernization and economic development have caused
many changes in the perceived gender issues. For example, industrialization has
led to majority of women's employability rather than just doing household work
especially in the cities. This accepted role has a direct impact on increasing
female education, training, and access to money, self reliant and movement into
the public sphere. Thus, economic independence has enabled women to certain
degree of autonomy and their level of confidence has grown up which help them
to foster good relationship with many other people from the wider sections of the
society and enabled them to participate in a larger social life. So far, the
degree of freedom and gender inequality do vary across the borders. Gender inequality has given rise to a number of issues
that affect the integrity of the women and also have an impact on the physical,
mental and their social well being which results on different kinds of violence
such as sexual abuse, economic deprivation, verbal abuse, incarceration
and psychological abuse etc. In many families, women are only earning members and
other dependent members of the family
have to depend on their income, in such situation, if they are being
harassed by their superiors and colleagues, they have to compromise due to fear
of losing jobs and income etc. In addition, in a male dominated society, the
chance of discrimination to women is higher in most of the organizations. Even
today, in many organizations, there are glass-ceiling for women, where they can
see the higher positions, but can never reach there even though they deserve
it.
Centuries have come, and centuries have
gone, but the plight of women is not likely to change. Time has helplessly
watched women suffering in the form of discrimination, exploitation,
degradation, aggression, humiliation etc. Fear of violence is an important
factor in the lives of most women, which causes lack of participation in every
sphere of life. There are various forms of crime against women. Sometimes it is
even before birth, sometimes in the adulthood and other phases of life. There
is different legislation for safeguarding the women in our country, but they
can take action only when the complaints are filed and brought to the court,
but we know that because of our traditional culture, women are always dominated
and get less support from their well being. According to census 2011, 82% of males and 65% of females are literate. The
difference of 17% indicates that many Indian parents still believe that
educating their sons takes precedence over daughters while allocating family
resources. The question arises that even the male is more literate than
female, but then why they behave as illiterate and do such offense against the
dignity of a human being. So if we need to finish up this violence, the very
first thing that we need to do is to change our old mindset that we have
learned from our traditional societies, like women should always be treated as
homemaker, they should not compare themselves with male etc.
Sexual harassment on the job generally
refers to unwanted verbal or physical, sexual advances directed towards women
employees by male supervisors, co-workers or customers. The behavior can range
from sexual comments, suggestions and gestures to physical contact sometimes
resulting in attempted or even actual rape. Penalties for refusal may include verbal
sexual denigration, lack of cooperation from co-workers, unfavorable job
evaluations and recommendations, increased performance requirements, changes in
schedules or work assignments, demotions or outright termination of employment.
Sexual harassment is not primarily sexual act. It is a form of violence which
is used against women as an instrument of social control and a symbol of male
superiority. Further, sexual harassment is a form of sex discrimination that
involves unwanted or unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature. This applies to
harassment by a person against another person of the opposite sex as well as
harassment by a person against another person of the same sex.
Furthermore, as defined in the Supreme
Court guidelines (Vishakha vs. The state of
Rajasthan, August 1997), sexual harassment includes such unwelcome sexually
determined behaviour as:
· Physical contact
· A demand or request for sexual favors
· Sexually colored remarks colored
· Showing pornography
· Any other unwelcome physical, verbal or
non-verbal conduct of a sexual nature, for example, leering, telling dirty
jokes, making sexual remarks about a person's body, etc.
Sexual harassment usually falls into one of three
categories: verbal, nonverbal, and physical.
· Verbal sexual harassment includes
suggestive comments about dress, sexual desirability, physique, or sexual
orientation; jokes about gender-specific traits; sexual propositions; and
sexually related threats and insults.
· Nonverbal sexual harassment includes
suggestive or insulting noises, obscene gestures, whistling, leering, and
displaying obscene pictures.
· Physical, sexual harassment includes
touching, pinching, standing or sitting too close, intentionally brushing
against someone else's body, and coercing sexual intercourse and assault.
There
are two types of sexual harassment
1) “Quid
pro quo” sexual harassment:
Quid
pro quo (this for that) harassment occurs when an employee is offered some job
benefit such as promotion, pay raise, etc., In return for sexual favors or is
subjected to some adverse action because of a refusal to submit to a request
for sexual favors.
2) “Hostile
work environment” sexual harassment:
It
occurs when an employee is subjected to unwelcome or unwanted sexual conduct
that is sufficiently pervasive or severe to alter the terms or conditions of
the employee’s employment, such conduct unreasonably interferes with an
employee’s work performance or creates an abuser, intimidating, offensive or
hostile work environment. A manager, supervisor, co-worker, or even a non employee,
such as a vendor, customer or third party can create a hostile environment.
Generally it is believed that if the people
are illiterate, they usually create violence in the society because they do not
understand the rules and regulations of the society which distract them from
their main job and create violence. Sometimes they may not be able to judge
between good and bad. On the contrary, the highly qualified people who all are
serving the organizations, they also involve in causing various kinds of
violence against the women at work place by misusing their authority or
sometimes abusing their authority. Sexual harassment results psychological and
physical injuries to the human resources and affects negatively to the
organizational effectiveness and productivity of an organization as these leads
to higher absenteeism, employee turnover, and lower employees’ morale. Thus,
realizing its consequences, well known business houses like Tata, Godrej,
Infosys and many other multinational corporations have formulated policies to
prevent sexual harassments at work place and to foster minimal acceptable
interpersonal behaviors to uphold discipline at work settings
Moreover, mere formulation of policy does
not ensure safety and security of women at work place because in some cases top
level executives themselves are involved in violating the norms which results
even employee unions fail to take up molestation cases (for whatever reason).
Hence, organizations have to foster a very conducive work culture to provide
security and safety for the women. In addition, there should be a favorable
environment for the employees to have confidence to report if there is any kind
of violations against them. Thus, setting the right organizational climate is
required for its successful implementation. Therefore, it is no wonder to note
that most cases of sexual harassment still go unreported.
Cases of Violence against Women in
India
Recent
studies have concluded that violence against women is the fastest-growing crime
in India. In every ten-rape cases, six are of minor girls. Every seven minutes
a crime is committed against women in India. Every 26 minutes a woman is
molested, every 34 minutes a rape takes place, every 42 minutes a sexual
harassment incident occurs, every 43 minutes a woman is kidnapped and every 93
minutes a woman is burnt to death over dowry. One-quarter of the reported rapes
involve girls under the age of 16 but the vast majorities are never reported.
Although the penalty is severe, convictions are rare, according to the (Home
Ministry's National Crime Records Bureau, New Delhi.2010)1. Nearly 88% of the female workforce in the Indian Information
Technology and business process outsourcing and knowledge process outsourcing
(BPO/KPO) companies reported having suffered some form of workplace sexual
harassment during the course of their work quoted in the survey conducted by
Transforming India, a nongovernmental organization in the Information
Technology and BPO/KPO industries. The report says that about 50% women had
been subjected to abusive language, physical contact or being sought sexual
favors from. As many as 47% employees did not know where to report, while 91%
did not report for fear of being victimized. The study further revealed that
there existed, poor awareness levels among female employees on the issue. It
further revealed that more than 82% of the incidents which could be classified
as sexual incidents occurred outside the boundaries of the office and in nearly
72% of the incidents the perpetrator was a superior. It was further found that
60% of the respondents were not aware of the workplace sexual harassment
policies of their organizations. Around 10% were only partially aware. Of all
the respondents, 77% stated that the details of sexual harassment policies were
not part of their hiring process, while only 7% stated that they could
recollect some discussion about the topic either during their hiring process or
later. As per Census 2011, the workforce
participation rate for females at the national level stands at 25.51% compared
with 53.26% for males. In the rural sector, females have a workforce
participation rate of 30.02% compared with 53.03% for males. In the urban
sector, it is 15.44% for females and 53.76% for males. (Aarti Dhar, The Hindu, 2010)2.
So far, Table 1
presents the crime head-wise incidents of crime against women during 2008-2012
and the percentage variation in 2012-2011. This helps us to understand the
phenomenon effectively