#Aftermath || “Work from home” and the challenge of preventing workplace sexual harassment

“Work from home” and the challenge of preventing workplace sexual harassment

Dr. Anagha Sarpotdar

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Dr. Anagha Sarpotdar has been working on socio-legal aspects of sexual harassment at workplace since 2005. Currently she is the Chairperson of Local Committee, Mumbai City District.

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Working from home is now an accepted part of an organisation’s  functioning due to the indefinite lockdown. Home has become an extended workplace for many  people  over the months. Organisations are actively encouraging employees to leverage the various instant online communication platforms available to them, including Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Google Meet and many others. It is central that employees understand their responsibility to communicate in the same way as they would in the workplace thereby complying with all applicable workplace policies.

Though individuals may be physically at home, they continue to operate in a workplace when interacting with colleagues. Despite remote access to each other, complaints of sexual harassment registered during this period range from calls at odd hours, unwarranted requests for video calls, gender biased comments and inappropriate language used in a team meeting.  Hence, it is important that employers acknowledge applicability of the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevntion, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013 to the nuances of a  non-traditional workplace.

The objective of the Act is to protect women from sexual harassment along with prevention and redressal of complaints of sexual harassment. The Act creates a concept of extended workplace wherein definition of workplace is not restricted to geographical location. Rather wherever the person is located in the context of work while performing professional duties becomes a workplace. More specifically, the Act defines workplace as “any place visited by the employee arising out of or during the course of employment, including transportation provided by the employer for undertaking such a journey”. Taking into consideration the definition of workplace, human resource departments and heads of business verticals need to ensure that they maintain regular contact with their employees for them to feel connected for reporting unwanted behaviour to the Internal Committee constituted under the Act. Particularly anti-sexual harassment policy also needs to be reiterated and the link provided to it.

Employees should be told that it is a misconduct to use text message, email, or social media in an offensive manner as it amounts to misconduct irrespective of the fact whether employees interact physically or virtually. Messages they send to others should be something that they would be willing to say to the other person on their face in person or via email.  If this is not the case, the communication is likely to be perceived as inappropriate. Employees should be informed that all internal communications are stored by the organisation and can be reviewed at a later date. Further it should also be communicated that data will be retained and accessible to the organisation. This should become part of relevant policies and/or employment contracts.  If communications software, used by employees, for conference calls (both audio and visual) allow recording, it is needed that all employees are aware of the same or else notification/consent should be sought. HR persons need to emphasise that memes and jokes about work from home scenarios could be offending and that rules of professional etiquette apply though the interaction is through online medium.

Since the Act defines sexual harassment as any physical, verbal and non-verbal conduct of sexual nature there is a possibility that  humorous content could be found violating sensibilities of women employees. Official dress code needs to be maintained while employees are connected for work virtually. While operating from the comfort of their home basic workplace norms can be ignored and conversations may become personal giving rise to discomfort. Though employees could be physically at home, while they are connected with each other for work, they are bound by the law and companies should necessarily relay this to employees clearly.

Trainings and awareness sessions with existing employees are done on an ongoing basis, they should also be done with the new recruits, interns and trainees who are being on boarded using online mechanisms. It is crucial that they become informed and sensitised to the expected norms of professional behaviour. Participation in these programmes can be ensured by using interactive material such as videos and case examples based on reported complaints of sexual harassment. Women employees can be informed about their rights guaranteed by the Act and specific provisions of the company anti sexual harassment policy.

Every employee can make efforts to ensure that the virtual working environment is devoid of sexual harassment. Employees can take following steps if they observe sexism and sexual harassment happening to their women employees.

1. Reach out to the woman employee who is a recipient of objectionable behaviour or is disturbed due to inappropriate conduct of others using direct messaging. Inform the person that you have noticed the problem and that you will be supporting them if they decide to apply for redressal.
2. Intervene in the situation and inform the person indulging in sexually harassing and / or gender biased behaviour to stop it and that it could have consequences as per company policy which is applicable in the work from home scenario.
3. Being an eyewitness to the inappropriate behaviour, extend support to the affected woman employee by helping her to document the incident.
4. Promptly bring the difficulty to the notice of the HR persons or IC for further action and support.
5. Cooperate with the IC if you are summoned by it as a witness during inquiry.

Organisation commitment towards eliminating sexual harassment should be conveyed openly and distinctly. Changes suitable for an online working environment should be made to the anti-sexual harassment policy and other allied organisation policies. It should be ensured that policies are enforced in absence of physical interaction for implementation. Motivate employees to voice their opinions on creating a workplace that has little tolerance to sexism and sexual harassment. Employers should ensure that the Internal Committee constituted according to the Act should remain functional. Internal Committees need to have online meetings with an aim to not only comply with the Act in terms of meeting periodically but to redress reported complaints by conducting inquiry. Additionally, if the reported incident of sexual harassment has happened in the online space then essential communication between complainant and respondent should be officially kept in abeyance till completion of inquiry.

It is for the senior management to build the culture free from sexual harassment by walking the talk. This includes upholding values of the company in words and action, facilitating functioning of the IC and recognising that change in the usual manner of working may lead to certain unexpected situations which should be dealt with a gender sensitive lens and as spirit of the Act.

#Metoo #Youtoo, Survivors Together by Sudha Umashankar: Campaign Edition of the Women’s History Roundtable

Sudha Umashankar is a freelance journalist and storyteller

The December edition of the Women’s History Roundtable was a special edition of the WHRT series, designed to be a part of the  2018 16 Days Campaign Against Gender Violence, and was presented by Sudha Umashankar.

 

This session of the WHRT series was based on storytelling and sharing in the era of the Me Too movement, which has sparked discussions about sexual harassment (particularly in the workplace) around the world.

 

Sudha Umashankar opened her session by narrating two stories. The first one was about 17 year old Sasirekha, one of four children. She had two sisters, and a trans brother, Naresh. Their mother was a cook. The family was ostracised because of Naresh. Sasirekha, a school dropout, worked in a garment factory. Her brother Naresh, who doted on her, did odd jobs, mainly associated with deity processions. The supervisor at  Sasirekha’s workplace was a married man named Devanaiyakam. He had the habit of constantly commenting on the girls and using nicknames for girls. He would come behind the girls while they are working in the pretext of checking their work and get uncomfortably physical with them. However, Sasirekha brushed off these incidents as demonstrations of sociability. One day he grabbed her bottom, but being a habitual offender he was able to talk himself out of it. One day he called her inside his room and forced himself on her. Confused, Sasirekha didn’t know if it was love or something else. He continued to force her to have sex with him, and Sasirekha soon found she was pregnant. She couldn’t tell her family. When she couldn’t hide it anymore, she told Devanaiyakam about it and asked him to marry her. But he refused saying he was already married, and her pregnancy was not his problem. On top of that, he accused her of not being “careful”. Unable to bear the shame, Sasirekha consumed rat poison and took her life.

 

The second story was about Sharanya, a talented singer and veena player. She wasn’t popular or a playback singer but she was invited to perform in smaller events in her community. She was married with children. Though she had many professional engagements, Sharanya struggled with her high pitch. To improve her voice, she started looking out for advertisements for voice coaches and came across one in the paper. He was a young voice coach and she really liked his classes and paid in full for his workshop. One day at his class as her time was up and she was preparing to leave, he suggested he would give her the feedback over the phone in the evening. In the evening, while Sharanya sang her song, the coach gave her really good feedback, saying she needs to sing from her diaphragm and that he would show her how in their next class. She could sense that he was slightly inebriated in the phone. The next day, as Sharanya went to her class, the voice coach was alone at home and took her to a room upstairs where he made her lay on a table and started touching her middle to show where her voice should come from. This made Sharanya extremely uncomfortable and she soon grabbed her things and ran from there, forced to forego her dream of perfecting her high pitch.

 

Sudha then opened the floor for discussion, asking for comments on these stories from various perspectives. Dr. Sissira (a psychiatrist)commented on the trauma both the victims had faced. While one didn’t have the support system to fall back on, the other reacted based on her instinct. R.S.Akhila (a lawyer) was asked to comment on the legal recourses and if there was an increase in the number of women who approached for legal help post the metoo. Akhila noted that there has been an increase in the number of women who called to inquire about legal recourses since the spread of the metoo movement. However, not many women followed up these initial queries to seek legal redress.

 

Given these expert opinions, the discussion then moved on to the question of what justice entails when it comes to sexual harassment. By inquiring about legal redress or even trying to reach out to networks of support to deal with the emotional effects of such incidents, what are women looking for when they reveal incidents such as those described in the stories above, and the many similar disclosures on social media? Is it closure, justice, or perhaps revenge? While many agreed that they were indeed looking for justice, the form it takes is often hazy. What does justice constitute? It might mean different things for different people. Sudha’s stories raised important questions surrounding the Me Too movement, thus demonstrating the effectiveness of storytelling and sharing as a tool of analysis.

After a short reading from Roxanne Gay’s book, Not That Bad, participants concluded that women are more than just their body. However, in the eyes of the government and law, women have been infantilised. Social conditioning through childhood and adolescence lead most women to brush off such incidents, and many are encouraged to  “move on” from the bad experience. Of course, responses to sexual harassment can vary and the best course of action depends on an individual’s vulnerabilities and strengths. Many voiced the need for teaching the children at home and at school to break free of gender stereotypes in order to address how best to minimise sexual harassment. As a society, we fail to invest the social and money capital on women. The men have survived the metoo movement, whereas the women are still surviving.

Notes taken by Sudaroli Ramasamy.

Tamil Nadu Perspective: Draft National Policy for Women

THE DRAFT NATIONAL POLICY FOR WOMEN: A TAMIL NADU PERSPECTIVE

Swarna Rajagopalan and Ragamalika Karthikeyan

One of the shortcomings of the Draft National Policy for Women 2016 is that it does not reflect regional concerns. Perhaps the expectation is that each state will come up with its own Policy guidelines but given the weakness of State Commissions for Women, there is no institutional advocate in most states that could push for such a document, leave alone engineer the consultations and debates that should precede the drafting of this document. Moreover, in the absence of truly wide-ranging consultations that reach beyond the usual suspects, the recommendations or guidelines as they stand are silent on a lot of key concerns for women.

Based on the experiences of women in Tamil Nadu in the last few years, we at Prajnya drew up a short list of concerns that they would be well-served to have included in the National Draft Policy.

I. Sexual and gender based inter-caste violence (‘Honour’ crimes): Since June 2013, civil society estimates 88 ‘honour’ killings in Tamil Nadu, with caste-mobs murdering young inter-caste couples, and sometimes even their families. Falling in love or marrying outside of caste boundaries is often threatened with sexual violence and murder. With no official estimates of such crimes, justice is often delayed or denied.

The Draft National Policy as it stands does not consider the gendered consequences of the overlap of vulnerabilities—when caste or socio-economic status or minority or ethnic status already place you at a disadvantage, both women and men are even more vulnerable to human rights violations, including sexual and gender-based violence.

II. The challenges faced by women refugees living in and out of camps in Tamil Nadu: There are over one lakh Sri Lankan refugees living in Tamil Nadu, close to 65,000 of them in refugee camps. Many of them live in cramped spaces without basic amenities like access to water and sanitation. Women and girls in these camps face sexual and gender based violence which goes frequently unreported. While life as refugees in India is difficult, going back to an unstable home in Sri Lanka is not an option for many.

Displacement is a reality across India—both refugees and internally displaced persons. Women make up at least half of these numbers and yet, the Draft National Policy does not acknowledge or address their problems.

III. Women and disasters: There is just one paragraph that mentions women’s needs in disaster contexts. Given the present frequency of climate change and human-made disasters, a gender-sensitive disaster risk reduction and mitigation policy is an urgent need that needs to be emphasised strongly.

In states like Tamil Nadu, women are vulnerable to both natural (and climate change) disasters like last year’s floods as well as the slow disasters that might result from human-planned development and industrial projects gone awry. The National Policy should mandate their inclusion with voice in consultations and decision-making at every turn–from project planning, to land acquisition negotiations, to resettlement planning and to safety planning.

IV. Workplace-related guidelines: While the Draft National Policy does address livelihood issues at length and emphasise the importance of workplace protections, we would like to draw attention to three situations where Tamil Nadu women would benefit from stronger national guidelines to protect their rights.

a. Forced and bonded labour of women and girls in spinning mills: A study conducted by civil society organisations says about 100,000 girls and women are being exploited as bonded labour in the textile industry in the state, and frequently face sexual violence at the workplace. Following the suspicious death of a teenager in Tirupur in March, investigations have revealed poor living conditions, and exploitative ‘schemes’ endangering the safety and health of young women.

b. Minimum wage for domestic workers in Tamil Nadu: Domestic workers are not covered under the Minimum Wages Act, and while some states have fixed a minimum wage, Tamil Nadu is not among them. There is also little awareness about their rights among domestic workers. Workplace sexual harassment, health insurance, decent working conditions are other areas of concern.

c. Enumeration of manual scavengers, abolition of manual scavenging: While the TN Govt has claimed there are only 210 manual scavengers in the state, both the National Commission for Scheduled Castes as well as civil society organisations have rejected this number. The state has over 2 lakh unsanitary toilets, and as many as 27,659 households are serviced manually, with another 26,020 households serviced by animals. Night soil is usually collected by Dalit women, and this inhuman practice, while officially abolished, still persists.

V. Single women living in poverty: Destitute, deserted and never married women (especially those over 35 years) living in urban slums and rural areas deserve social support. The National Policy should acknowledge their special needs.*

VI. Enabling Environment: The TN State Women’s Commission has been less and less active in the last decade, chaired by political appointees who have rarely reached out to women’s groups and other parts of civil society. The State and National Commissions are uniquely placed to serve as a bridge between government and civil society, and when they are more or less moribund, they are a wasted opportunity for a strong partnership between the two for social change. Civil society loses and institutional ally and the government loses the ability to genuinely connect with the public.

The National Policy for Women should re-imagine the Women’s Commissions in a stronger form and mandate their constitution as an independent, well-resourced and pro-active body.

*Point V is the contribution of Ms. Renuka Bala of the Centre for Women’s Development Research. 

Ladies’ Special

I travelled in a “Ladies Only” taxi for the first time this week. The 26 km commute from the airport was one of discovery–that many women work outside their homes in this megapolis at great personal cost.

I was walking to the taxi stand when a girl in her mid-20s, in trousers and sharp pin-striped shirt, approached me asking if I needed a cab. She was from “XYZ” car company that ran a fleet taxi service for women with women drivers.  She told me she drove a Mahindra Logan and for my destination she would charge by the km and give a receipt.  I decided to try it and hopped in. Alas, we barely went 20m when the car stopped.  And then came the first discovery: some men will not lose any opportunity to pull down a woman they see in a job  that has traditionally been their preserve.

A bunch of Cool Cab drivers sidled up to the car – one started mocking the driver “J”  for the crappy car she drove, another patronisingly asked her if she knew what to do, a third asked her if she knew how to switch between CNG & petrol . While she opened up the bonnet, a few more mean comments came by. She sat back in car, called a colleague to take her fare ( i.e., me) and then called her company to report the problem.

While I waited in her car for the next cab to come, I asked her what she would do. She said she would move the car to the side and go home. The company would send a towing van when they could arrange for it. I worried for her safety even in the supposedly secure premises of India’s busiest airport.

“M” came by a few minutes later. She expertly transferred my bags into her Hyundai Accent and we drove off. On discovering I spoke the local language, M spent the next 26 kilometres telling me her life story.  Having lost her mum to cancer 2 years earlier, M gave up on a college degree. Her older sister had just gotten married, her 2 younger siblings were under 10 and she had finished class 12.  Her painter dad needed another income to pay off medical loans and get the household running.  M’s neighbour was a lady-cabbie and she decided to give it a go. She got through her driving test and training and got a job as one of the 25 or so lady cabbies of the city. The system worked like this: every fortnight she paid the cab company 9000 rupees; the rest of her earnings, less the cost of fuel, was her income (around10-15000 Rs. p.m) . She said she preferred doing at least 1 airport trip a day and then came my second discovery: M did not use a public toilet anywhere in the city other than the airport. Said she “held” herself because the public toilets were dirty or wet or simply unusable.  If she was lucky, she got a chance to use a facility at a fare’s office building.

This reminded me of Sujata Anandan’s article. When the physiological needs of a woman member of Maharashtra State’s Cabinet is not factored in by colleagues, the needs of women taxi drivers come low in the pecking order of responsibilities of governments and municipalities towards its citizens.

Makes me wonder:

• What is the role of regulatory bodies when it comes to behaviour of its members?
  It’s bad enough a lady cabbie is ribbed in broad daylight with a passenger sitting in her vehicle, what happens if some of those men are drunken louts, at night?  The Taximen’s Union is not the most liked group of people in the city; this experience confirmed that many of its members have one hell of a mean streak. They rage against change in a way that is hurtful beyond belief and the Union has no interest in enforcing some basic human values in them. In few cities will less civilised people be in charge of passenger transport. How can we claim our place at the high table of world powers if we cannot ensure some order among our taximen?  I hope some good Samaritans would have helped J push her car aside at the airport that day because not one of those Cool Cab drivers showed any inclination to help.

• Just how high are the cards stacked against women?  We talk of reservations to acquire political power but what about creating an environment where they can work without facing hostility?

• And finally: just what is it about us and poor sanitation?  Why can’t we build more toilets and having built them why can’t we keep them clean ? Incidentally, you know when you are going past the men’s loo at the airport arrival lounge–the stink is in the air. Tells me whoever designed the ventilation system didnt do a good job . Of course,  it would help if the airport authorities invested in some air fresheners too.

Or maybe we must have self cleaning loos everywhere and pray to Swachcha Narayani instead.

Workplace Sexual Harassment: New Indian Law

The Indian cabinet just approved the introduction of the Protection of Women against Sexual Harassment at Workplace Bill, 2010. Law Resource India describes the proposed bill here, and provides links to related articles. So far, action in workplace sexual harassment cases has been governed by the guidelines laid down by the Supreme Court of India in the Vishakha case in 1997.

 

A woman’s work is never done: Sexual harassment in sports

Recently, sexual harassment charges were made against the coach of the Indian women’s hockey team.

• Tushar Bhaduri, Women hockey player alleges sexual harassment by coach, India Today, July 21, 2010.
• Y. B. Sarangi, Kaushik resigns following allegations of sexual harassment, The Hindu, July 21, 2010.
• Women hockey players allege sexual harassment, Times of India, July 20, 2010. (video)
• Shahbaz Aslam, Hockey player T S Ranjitha accuses coach for sexual harassment, Forestlaneshul, July 23, 2010.

The incident has brought workplace sexual harassment to the op-ed pages again, and this time in the context of sports–where recently it has been about books and publishing.

• Namita Bhandare, Don’t dribble past this episode, Hindustan Times, July 23, 2010.

The title of this post is derived from her report that it is considered normal for women players to wash their male coach’s clothes.

• Why do you think sexual harassment is widespread in Indian sports? What can be done to prevent it? DNAIndia.com,  July 24, 2010. (links to other stories)