What does a woman supervisor do when she spots a used sanitary napkin lying carelessly discarded in the ladies washroom? Call the cleaner to clean up the washroom? Stick up a notice requesting people to not do so? Address the ladies at workplace separately, instructing them to properly discard napkins? Or all of the above?
What she must not do however, is to conduct a strip search of all the women in the office to check who is menstruating in order to try and find the culprit. Yet that is exactly what happened at a private firm in the Cochin Special Economic Zone in Kerala. In one of the most outrageous episodes ever heard so far, 45 women working at the Asma Rubber Private Limited in the Kochi Special Economic Zone, all under 50 years of age, were forced to strip and were searched to check who among them was menstruating.
This happened after a used sanitary napkin was found in the toilet. When interrogating the women working there about the napkin did not yield any results, the two female supervisors there decided to resort to more humiliating ways to get the results.
For a state with supposedly progressive outlook on some fronts, Kerala is said to have a suprisingly regressive attitude towards women at workplaces. Sexual harassment, for instance, at workplaces is not uncommon, says the State Women’s Commission. In fact, Women’s Commission member Lissy Jose added that during her earlier visit to this SEZ, women employees here shared their grievances but not harassment of this nature.
Sadly, harassment at workplaces hardly ever gets revealed, nor are complaints taken seriously unless it borders on the extreme. But how far is too far? If such complaints are nipped in the bud and the companies have a zero-tolerance policy and a complaints escalation system in place for workplace harassment, then it could go a long way in preventing incidents of a serious nature. It works to their advantage too as workplace harassment clearly hampers productivity.
The numbers however, clearly indicate that very little is being done in ths regard. According to data provided by the National Commission for Women, the number of cases registered against sexual harassment at workplaces went up by 49% from 2012 to 2013 and by 34% from 2013 to 2014.
Even if company does have a harassment policy in place, there are still other hurdles to be crossed. Attitudes, for instance.
There was an episode some years ago at one of the organisations I had worked with earlier, where a complaint of sexual harassment was raised by a female colleague. The complaint was escalated and the man in question was given a dismissal. The issue however, became a butt of jokes, atleast for the male colleagues. For the next few months, there were constant asides during conversations, where the men quipped, sometimes within earshot of the victim, “Oh, but let me keep my mouth shut. For all I know, you too might complain of sexual harassment.”
Here was an organisation with a reasonable policy and escalation system in place regarding work place harassment. Yet the victim continued to face flak from co-workers despite the authorities taking her seriously.
Social isolation at workplace, uncomfortable questions or in this case, insensitive remarks and jokes is all too common. It’s high time that a multi-pronged change is instituted, both in the system and in the attitudes, to prevent harassment. And companies have many options today to achieve this.
There are several consultancies in existence today, who specialise solely in sensitising employees on workplace decorum and what constitutes as harassment. Many companies don’t mind forking a hefty fee for this too, if it means creating a healthy, sensitised and gender-neutral work environment.
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