Demands for sexual favours, inappropriate touches and lewd comments continue to afflict workplaces in the country, with the national Capital being the most undesirable city for female workers, a recent survey report has found.

Of the total 6,092 case studies in the survey, Delhi reported the highest number of victims, 63 percent, followed by Mumbai and Bengaluru. The findings also indicated that the workplace harassment was the highest in IT segment, followed by education, media and legal sectors.

"I am not surprised," Swati Maliwal, head of the Delhi Commission for Women told Mail Today. "If you look at the rate of crime against women in Delhi, the average is higher than other metropolitan cities."

Maliwal said the commission has been receiving a lot of complaints of the nature which shows that women workers in Delhi are in distress. "There are several lacunae in the implementation of the law (against harassment of women at workplace) which is adding to the problem."

STUDY

The study conducted by the Indian National Bar Association was carried out over seven months, from April to October 2016, to assess the severity and the current status of sexual harassment at workplace. The respondents from various fields were interviewed in Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Pune, Assam, Jalandar, Kolkata, Ahemdabad, Hyderabad and Lucknow.

The survey showed that higher authorities in their companies often turn a blind eye towards such complaints. In 66.7 per cent cases, where the complaints were filed, the respondents said the internal complaints committee did not deal with the issue fairly.

The victims also felt that the legal protection given the Act is not implemented in an organised manner, making the complainant further vulnerable, with 57. 8 per cent of the respondents saying they did not receive support from their peers while the rest were left disappointed.

In the cases where a complaint was lodged, only 50 per cent decided to continue with the same organisation after the completion of the internal inquiry, while the rest chose to quit.

Zameer Nathani, chairperson, media of the association, told Mail Today that the awareness on how to deal with sexual harassment cases is still very low in the country. "The most shocking fact was to learn the unawareness about the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace Act 2013."

Nathani said, "The common perception is that sexual harassment at workplace is limited to the interactions between the male boss and the female employees. This is not true. The harassment can occur between any two co-workers. The offender can be a customer, vendor, supplier, supervisor or manager. It can include peer to peer harassment, same sex harassment, men being harassed by women and vice-versa."

About the reasons for not reporting such incidents, the survey found that 68.9 percent of victims did so because of fear of retaliation and subsequent repercussions. The victims decided to take matters in their own hands due to fear, embarrassment and the lack of confidence in the complaint mechanism and unawareness of the functioning of the mechanism.

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SURVEY

The survey highlighted that the 65.2 per cent of the respondents felt that the companies were still unaware of the process under sexual harassment of women at workplace Act 2013, even after the complaint was made. They revealed that the companies did not follow the due procedure while investigating the matter. The 50.7 per cent of victims also revealed that they were targets of harassment through social networking sites.

The survey said that the harassment was done at the hands of immediate colleagues, superiors and others in the organisation and the duration for which went from six months to over a year. "The victims are maximum harassed physically or inappropriate touching and passing lewd comment. This comprise of total 75 per cent while rest includes sexism or asking for sexual favors," the report said.

Speaking about the steps taken by the Delhi commission to deal with the issue, Maliwal said that it has ensured a local complaints committee in almost all the districts. "For the districts that are remaining, we have issued summons to their district magistrate and are in the process of them. We are also giving recommendations to the government on how to go about to bring some changes in the Act."