The Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013 was a great step forward in protecting women from sexual harassment at the workplace. It provided for a mechanism to redress sexual harassment issues by its creation of Internal Committee and Local Committees. By using a procedure that was tailored to consider the particular vulnerabilities of the victim while also providing for natural justice, the Act managed to pave the way forward for a victim centric approach.ย
But what this also did was place the onus of bringing a problem to light on the victim. So, while the Act exists today and is implemented by employers, to trigger a process under this Act, there must always be a complainant. This is possibly the greatest hurdle for victims to seek redress. Often, they are afraid of retaliation and shaming. Therefore, many just prefer to seek other options like a quiet resignation or a request to be assigned to a different team. This, however, doesnโt ensure that the harasser faces any semblance of justice at all. In most cases, unless someone complains, a harasser can get away with harassing multiple women over an extended period of time.ย
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This is something we have seen happening with the #MeToo phenomena. In the #MeToo movement what we observed was that people accused were facing multiple accusations and these accusations happened over a period of time. A data driven approach may allow for more proactive interventions to create a safer workplace.ย
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Presently the data that companies are required to disclose centre around the complaints and how they have been disposed of. Under the Act the reports are supposed to be submitted to the District Authorities. The MCA and SEBI require disclosures at a national level for entities that are within their remit. This does not give anyone a clear picture into whether there are systemic issues in an organisation. But it does give us a place to start.
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But this information is often hidden in plain sight. There is no centralised government portal that allows one to see the reported data. A woman applying for a job at a company may want to know the number of complaints at that company. A shareholder may want to examine the number of complaints over time. But this data is not fully accessible as it is not served up to the user in a simple way. This data should also be available to key stakeholders and more kinds of data needs to be gathered.
For example, the data should disclose how many complaints were made against or by top and senior management as against other employees and include in its segmentation complaints by or against external contractors/vendors. This will help identify systemic problems that could be present in certain companies and industries.โ
The other day, I encountered someone who is being harassed at work. She said she plans to resign. But she also said she should have known before she joined. She told me that all the previous resignations in this team were by women within short periods of time one after the other. She saw that as a red flag. This is a kind of flag that a companyโs HR system should be able to pick up and trigger an internal review. Such as asking those women why they resigned.ย
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There are other red flags that can be ascertained once we collect and analyse the data. We can apply new technologies such as AI to anonymised SHe-Box data and help identify trends and patterns. This could help employers and governments identify patterns of behaviour that lead to or are evidence of sexual harassment.ย
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We live in a world where advertising technology is possible to predict human behaviour to the point where we can serve up an advertisement of what someone wants at a particular time. We should apply this technology to human behaviour at the workplace to see which groups are at a high risk of sexual harassment and what are the power dynamics that create it. Prevention is often better than a cure, the Government should consider a data driven approach to try and create safer workplaces across the country.ย
For organisations seeking to strengthen their PoSH/DEI frameworks, contact us to build inclusive workplaces that empower, retain, and elevate women.
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