It’s growing
Last year two-thirds of the companies in the Nifty, an index of Indian blue chips, reported cases of sexual harassment. Wipro, one of the largest IT employers, topped the list with well over 100 cases.
The number is higher than you think
The number of sexual harassment complaints at workplace went up by 52 per cent in India with 249 registered cases in 2013 to 526 cases in 2014! This is according to data provided by the National Commission for Women. In Gujarat alone, new cases have gone up by 59 per cent.
Here’s the big problem
Most organisations do not have structures in place to deal with it. A survey conducted by FICCI shows that 31 per cent of the respondents were not compliant with the Sexual Harassment Act of 2013, which mandates Internal Complaints Committee (ICC) to address complaints. Non-compliance among Indian companies was 36 per cent whereas MNCs were marginally better, standing at 25%.
Wait, there’s more to this
More than 40 per cent of the companies are yet to train their ICC members. Indian companies fared low with 47 per cent. On the other hand, MNCs stood at 34 per cent. Many companies – about 35 percent of them – were ignorant about the penalty for not complying with this law. Surprisingly, MNCs were equally or more ignorant about this, with about 38 per cent professing lack of knowledge.
But our government’s not that interested in it
Two days ago, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley turned down his cabinet colleague, Maneka Gandhi’s request to make it mandatory for companies to reveal whether they have put in place an Internal Complaints Committee to inquire into sexual harassment complaints of women employees. In his letter, Jaitley objected to Maneka’s suggestion on the ground that industry representatives were against “enhanced disclosures under the Companies Act, 2013 and adding to these may not be desirable”.
This could happen to you too
Over 27 per cent of Indian women confessed to being harassed at work, in some form or the other. Indian women also face some of the worst cases of unequal treatment at the workplace among G20 countries, says a report by Ipsos MORI poll of more than 9,500 women commissioned by the Thomson Reuters Foundation and The Rockefeller Foundation.
