Fewer sexual harassment reporting at top firms in FY19
The third of a four-part series takes a look at the reasons behind fewer women reporting cases
The financial year 2019 (FY19) saw scores of women across industries share a personal account of sexual harassment, most of them being at work places. Borrowing from the West, it was supposed to be India’s #Metoo movement.
Data for India’s biggest companies, however, weaves a different story, with fewer women reporting sexual harassment relative to the number of women employees.
Business Standard collected data from hundreds of annual reports across periods, as part of a yearly check on representation of marginalised groups and discrimination among companies that are part of the S&P BSE 100 index.
The analysis looked at 76 companies for which continuous data is available over the past three years.
For every 10,000 women employees with these companies, 10.59 sexual harassment complaints were filed in FY19. There has been a decline in reporting with 10.65 complaints reported in FY18 and 11.1 reported in FY17 ( see chart 1).
These 76 companies combined had a workforce comprising 504,000 women and reported 534 incidents of sexual harassment in FY19. The ratio of complaints to women employees seem to be lower than what individual studies in the past have found, which suggests under-reporting.
Oxfam India and the Social and Rural Research Institute together conducted a study titled ‘Sexual Harassment at Workplaces in India 2011-2012’.
It looked at 400 working women in eight cities in the country. Of the 400 who respondents, 66 faced a cumulative 121 incidents of sexual harassment. This works out to a frequency of over 16.5 per cent (or 1,650 per
10,000 women employees).
Krishna Menon — professor, Gender Studies and currently Dean,
School of Human Studies, Ambedkar University, Delhi, attributes the underreporting on such cases to the absence of a strong support system.
“What is seen in terms of reporting sexual harassment at workplaces is that a critical variable is a strong group of colleagues who would be there to (provide) support,” she said.
Menon added that an atmosphere where conversation about dignity of employees and participatory decision making takes place on a regular basis is equally important.
The share of women among total employees was 22.51 per cent for FY19 showed an earlier story in this series, up a tad from 21.73 per cent in FY18.
It was under 10 per cent for six out of 10 firms in the sample.
Menon also highlights social and economic barriers for reporting sexual harassment cases.
“Family honour or marriage prospects are among the many reasons cited to dissuade women from filing complaints and then there is of course the real fear of losing one’s job. Sexual harassment is seen more as a loss of honour for the family and less as...(a)...loss of dignity for the woman.”
According to the National Crime
Records Bureau (2017), workplaces saw the least number of reported sexual harassment complaints, against those in public transport systems and women and child shelters ( see chart 2). Among cities, Delhi and Hyderabad had a higher number of such complaints registered (see chart 3).
Another problem could be the internal complaint committees (ICCS) themselves.
“Victim blaming, insensitivity, lack of empathy during investigations; these tend to get whispered about thus deterring others from raising complaints,” said Kalpana Tatavarti, founder of Parity Consulting and Training.
The under-reporting does not stop at the company ICC level. Data from the complaints sent to the Women and Child Development ministry’s She-box shows a similar trend.
According to a July reply filed with the Rajya Sabha, the She-box received a total of 612 complaints across India, of which only 313 were from private organisations. She-box is a singlewindow access for women to complain. Once submitted, it is directly sent to the concerned authority for action.
The past year did see some efforts from a few companies to make workplaces safer for women. Anand Mahindra, chairman of the Mahindra Group, for instance, took to Twitter in October to convey that the group has a zero-tolerance for any form of sexual harassment.
More corporates are opening a healthy dialogue around diversity, inclusion and discrimination.
Experts believe this could result in a safer place for all vulnerable employee groups, including persons with disabilities, women and contract employees.
Next: Contract employees