Rising cases under PoSH Act point to better reporting

CategoryPolity

Last Updated18/06/2024

More and more women are getting into STEM - Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths - courses in India, resulting in them landing jobs in corporate houses, especially in the IT sector.
Hence, the proportion of women in leading corporate firms has increased considerably over time.

Yet, attrition rate — the percentage of employees who leave an organisation — is also, in general, higher among women than men. Women leave organisations for many reasons
- including societal pressure after marriage, pregnancy, and post-pregnancy work-life balance, reasons that rarely apply to men.
Adding to the list, workplace harassment — verbal, sexual or otherwise — may also play a role in such exits.
If the number of cases reported under the PoSH Act is anything to go by, a look at just the figures from the top four IT firms shows that instances are rising again after a brief pause during the pandemic.
The Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013 (PoSH Act) was introduced over a decade ago to protect women against workplace sexual harassment.
While the numbers have increased over time, only a few such cases get reported officially.
women, in general, especially those who are married, avoid raising such complaints, it is important to study the environment around them.
many firms have not even constituted Internal Complaints Committees and in places which have one, members were inadequate or lacked representatives from outside the company.