Growing up, watching my mother struggling through her troubled marriage, I assumed that her powerlessness originated from her poor access to education and lack of financial independence. But here I am, a postgraduate, feeling utterly powerless after suffering harassment at my previous workplace.

I was at the receiving end of unwelcome physical, verbal and non-verbal conduct by a senior, and was torn between standing up for myself and staying silent. I feared that I’d be called a trouble-maker if I speak up; my fear won after all. I was angry, frustrated and felt helpless. Questions like ‘Why did this happen to me?’, ‘What did I do?’, ‘What about my agency?’ kept haunting me. I carried the burden of these questions until I was told that my behavioral patterns were in line with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) symptoms. It was then that I decided that I will not question the fairness of events anymore.

In this light, began my quest for understanding the prevalence of sexual harassment, how it is perceived, and dealt with. According to a survey conducted by Stop Street Harassment in 2018, 81% of women had experienced some form of sexual harassment. The pervasiveness of sexual harassment was overwhelming yet unsurprising. However, the sheer lack of active mechanisms to tackle sexual harassment, and how it gets normalized as a part of our lives was startling, to say the least.  

Trying to figure out the steps to report sexual harassment, I came across the legal provisions to curb harassment at workplaces and the Prevention of Sexual Harassment at Workplaces Act, 2013. In my research on the likelihood of victims obtaining justice through the POSH Act, I became aware of the appalling reality. Even after eight years of the enactment of the POSH Act in India, there’s hardly any data on its implementation and the available statistics are disparate and scattered. 

Although the act mandates that “the appropriate Government shall monitor the implementation of this Act and maintain data on the number of cases filed and disposed of in respect of all cases of sexual harassment at workplace”, there’s no centralized data repository by the Govt as of now. We don’t have information not just on the national prevalence of sexual harassment, but also regarding the number of companies and districts complying with the guidelines, and the number of cases received and their outcomes.

Generally, lack of data can be misused to suggest the absence of a phenomenon, and in this case, it can result in grave injustice to the women who suffered harassment. As per an online survey with over 28,000 participants, 78% of women victims of sexual harassment in India don't report the crime at workplaces; reasons include stigma, lack of awareness, fear of retribution, and lack of faith in the system. While raising awareness and gender-sensitization can help women make use of the legal provisions, better quality data can aid analyze the trends and contribute to the standard operating procedures, which in turn will lead to better implementation. 

Making information available to the public reinstates their faith that a law is effective, and working. Data is a key aspect of Democracy! 95% of India’s female workforce is employed in the informal sector. When educated women like myself are unable to access the law and not clear about the institutional processes, it isn’t hard to imagine how exclusionary this law can be for women in the informal sector. Such extreme inefficiency in the implementation of an act - even after eight years of its existence -will make women completely lose faith in the system. This should not happen. We therefore demand this information. We request the WDCW Department and the Government of Telangana to issue an order for a third-party audit to evaluate the implementation of the POSH Act by December 2021.

In a patriarchal world - created by, and for men - it’s not a coincidence that we feel powerless and helpless when we’re riding against the tide. India’s female labour force participation rate is the lowest in South Asia. It declined from 30.27% in 1990 to 20.8% in 2019. A key factor in this decline is questionable-safety for women in workplaces. Increasing female labour force participation by 10% points could add $770 billion to India’s GDP by 2025. It is therefore high time that compliance to POSH Act is taken seriously. A comprehensive audit showing the actual realities could lead the government to take stringent measures.