There was 500 years’ of a rich and vibrant collective experience when more than 20 trade union activists, labour researchers, academics, grass-roots organisers, worker activists and educators came together for a consultation at PRIA, New Delhi on 18 January 2016 to discuss the role of trade unions and workers' educators in making workplaces safe for women. Darcy Ashman and Barb Thomas from Management Systems International, Arlington, USA participated in the discussions. The general principles, structural and cultural issues from their decades of work in adult education with peoples' organisations was a rich area for dialogue from which PRIA could learn and share its own experiences.
All workers, both women and men, have the right to a workplace that is protected, secure, free from discrimination and violence, and conducive to fulfilling one’s roles and responsibilities. Today, in India there is a legal directive that outlaws all forms of sexual harassment of women at the workplace. The purpose of the consultation was to devise an operational strategy to scale-up implementation of the 2013 Act on the Prevention of Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace under Martha Farrell Foundation’s priority programme on Making Workplaces Safe for All Women. PRIA is partnering with Martha Farrell Foundation on this initiative.
Participants felt we need to accept that sexual harassment at the workplace is a cross-cutting issue that has become an occupational hazard for all working women, and its prevention is critical to creating gender equal and safe work environments. Discussion included the long lasting negative and traumatic impacts of sexual harassment on individuals who are victims of it. This is aggravated when the issue is often viewed as being a woman's issue alone and often ‘made up’ by them. The unorganised sector is not prepared to deal with this issue effectively – compliance is an issue. Having said that, the absence of an effective and just redressal mechanism has also been the experience of female workers from the organised sector. There is lack of data on the issue and women are not reporting it for a variety of reasons – fear of the loss of a job and further victimisation by authorities are only some of them. Creating awareness on the issue among both workers and authorities, generating data and creating spaces and opportunities for dialogue were identified as being the need of the day critical to bringing focus on the issue.
Under the leadership of (late) Dr. Martha Farrell, PRIA had championed and promoted prevention of sexual harassment at the workplace over the past decade.
Making workplaces safe for women is a central mandate of the newly established
Martha Farrell Foundation. Its initiatives include creating awareness on prevention of sexual harassment at the workplace and its legal provisions through trainings (face-to-face and online), seminars, open forum discussions for Internal Complaints Committee (ICC) members and employees, and undertaking field research to support national and global advocacy on the issue.
