| Sexual Harassement
Sexual Harassment Policy
While exact statistics of the number of women to men working in
NGOs in India is not known, we can safely assume that significant
proportion of workforce and volunteers in NGOs, CBOs and most of
the workforce or participants in SHGs are women. In the NGO Sector,
women may suffer sexual harassement from the immediate superiors
or the seniors in the organisation. There is also a possibility
of sexual harassement from people in the funding agencies.
According to The Supreme Court definition, sexual harassment is
any unwelcome sexually determined behaviour, such as physical contact,
a demand or request for sexual favours, sexually coloured remarks,
showing pornography, any other physical, verbal or non-verbal conduct
of a sexual nature.
Sexual Harassment takes place if a person subjects another person
to an unwelcome act of physical intimacy, like grabbing, brushing,
touching, pinching etc; makes an unwelcome demand or request (whether
directly or by implication) for sexual favours from another person,
and further makes it a condition for employment/payment of wages/increment/promotion
etc.; makes an unwelcome remark with sexual connotations, like sexually
explicit compliments / cracking loud jokes with sexual connotations
/ making sexist remarks etc. ; shows a person any sexually explicit
visual material, in the form of pictures / cartoons / pin-ups /
calendars / screen savers on computers / any offensive written material/pornographic
e-mails, etc.; engages in any other unwelcome conduct of a sexual
nature, which could be verbal, or even non-verbal, like staring
to
make the other person uncomfortable, making offensive gestures,
kissing sounds, etc.
Responsibility of the NGO Management
NGO managements must know that it is their legal responsibility
to provide safe working environment for women free from sexual harassment
and discrimination and that you can be held liable for sexual harassment
by employees.
Appreciate that an absence of complaints about sexual harassment
does not necessarily mean an absence of sexual harassment. It may
mean that the recipients of sexual harassment think that there is
no point in complaining and this is dangerous and you can be caught
unawares by the law.
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