Prevention of Sexual Harassment: Best Practices

Global Standards and Norms

The worldwide society has, over time, established standards to serve as a guide for the development of legislation regarding sexual harassment in the workplace. The most important indicators are as follows:

1. Admitting that sexual harassment in the workplace is a form of discrimination and a violation of human rights.
2. Understanding that sexual harassment is discrimination based on a person’s gender.
3. The importance of each person’s inherent worth, dignity, and equality should be emphasised.
4. When women are victims of gender-based violence, such as sexual harassment, it limits their ability to exercise a number of essential human rights and freedoms. Some examples of these rights are:

• the right to life, freedom, and security of the person
• the right to equal protection under the law
• the right to the best possible standard of physical and mental health
• the right to reasonable and favourable terms of labour

5. The right not to be subjected to sexual harassment at work is an important part of ending violence against women and promoting women’s equality.
6. Sexual harassment should be included in the definition of violence in any legislation addressing violence against women. Sexual harassment is a form of discrimination and a violation of women’s rights that can have serious health and safety effects, and it should be explicitly recognised as such in any such legislation.
7. The International Labour Organisation (ILO) has also called attention to the fact that domestic workers have the right to “enjoy effective protection against all forms of abuse, harassment, and violence.”

In actuality, it is crucial for international law and policy frameworks to promote an understanding of sexual harassment as a fundamental human right and equality issue, rather than only a matter to be solved by labor/ employment legislation.
Putting these ideas into action calls for vigilant observation and a willingness to adjust to new conditions. The following are the first six basic steps that every company should remember and implement:

1. First, ensure that all employees, paid or unpaid, have been “effectively” communicated with regarding company rules.
2. Provide information on both informal and official channels via which employees can address or lodge complaints about sexual harassment in the workplace.
3. The third step is for each business, organisation, or institution to provide its employees with training on how to prevent and respond to sexual harassment in the workplace.
4. A well-trained Complaints Committee is essential to establishing credibility.
5. Those in positions of authority in an organisation should be encouraged to set a good example in the workplace.
6. The creation of a culture that does not tolerate sexual harassment in the workplace should involve both men and women.

The India Story

In India, sexual harassment in the workplace is now a criminal offence that cannot be ignored on moral grounds alone. The Vishaka Guidelines increased the threshold when they identified “each incident of sexual harassment” as a denial of the right to equality for the first time. The Act, which supports women’s constitutionally protected right to be free from sexual harassment in the workplace, incorporates this idea. It is now the responsibility of complaints committees in all workplaces to protect this right by instituting a transparent, well-informed, and accessible system for resolving complaints.

India’s novel approach to addressing the issue of sexual harassment in the workplace is to focus on prevention and set up a redress system that is at least half female and has a female chair and an external third-party expert. If the law and practice are modified sufficiently to satisfy international standards, that model has the potential to become a model for other countries to emulate. Today’s Indian workplaces must step up to the challenge of fostering gender parity if the country is to realise this vision.