Kolkata, Badlapur, Delhi, Hathras, Unnao, Kumaon—each place has witnessed the heinous crime of rape and murder in recent times. There is also the Ajmer rape and blackmail saga and MolIywood’s hall of shame. In India, 90 rapes are perpetrated every day on unsuspecting women, girls and even toddlers—most often with impunity. It’s clear that women are not safe anywhere: not in schools, on streets, with friends and family, and even workplaces. From the gruesome rape-murder of a trainee medico in a Kolkata college to the shameful allegations gripping Kerala’s film industry, women professionals are having to constantly battle sexual harassment and assault in their working lives.
The #MeToo movement had rocked Indian society in 2018, exposing misdeeds in Bollywood, the government and media; the name-and-shame testimonies on social media effectively brought down many powerful men. From those examples and more recent ones, we know sexual harassment at work comes in many forms—from inappropriate language and touch, to brazen predatory behaviour. It is a matter of shame for society that safety remains elusive for working women despite the many laws to protect them.
The Vishaka guidelines formulated by the Supreme Court in 1997 were followed by the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act in 2013. Both aimed to guarantee gender equality and dignity at the workplace. They underlined the fact that harassment deters women from building careers, and elbows them out of the workforce and into the confines of home.
A lot needs to be done to bring in ground-level change. We need strict laws binding companies to taking action against the perpetrator and not the victim, as is often the case. Companies should ensure that women’s safety is paramount on their premises and take responsibility for those working late shifts. The Kolkata atrocity took place in the dead of night, on a doctor who had just been on duty.
We also need harsher punishments to deter rapists, with courts treating more rape-murders as ‘rarest of rare’ cases. For effective deterrence, we can do without activists seeking leniency and bleeding-heart judges. To rid Indian society of this malaise and change men’s mindset, we need to start early by sensitising young boys to respect girls as equal partners. As President Droupadi Murmu declared, “Enough is enough”—our daughters deserve “freedom from fear”.