Sexual Harrassment at Workplace

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Gender and Sexual Harassment at Workplace Submitted by: Antara Basu Abstract: Gender based violence is defined in the UN in the Convention of the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) as ‘any act that is likely to or results in physical, sexual or psychological harm, or suffering to women, including threats or acts of coercion, arbitrary deprivation of liberty… private or public… in the family, community.’ Sexual Harassment has been defined in terms of the subjective experience of the person targeted by the behaviour and by the degree to which the behaviour was unwelcome and unwanted by that person. Under Article 19(1)(g) of the Constitution of India, every citizen has a right “to practice any profession or to carry out any occupation, trade or business”. It was only recently in 1997 that Supreme Court in the landmark case of Vishakha v. State of Rajasthan has recognized sexual harassment at workplace as a violation of basic human rights and has laid down some useful guidelines for the same. This paper starts off with an introduction to the perception and patterns of sexual harassment in the workplace and the effect it causes on the victims, as a result of it. It has been a decade since the Vishakha judgment has been passed and the scenario is almost the same till date. The main objective of the paper is to detect the problem of implementation of the guidelines provided and thereby studying the lacunae in the judgment in the current scenario. In this context the paper also mentions the current legal framework available concerning the issue at hand. At the end the paper concludes by criticizing some provisions of Sexual Harassment Bill 2010 and urges the legislature to pass a suitable law so as to improve the situation so that every Indian woman can work peacefully, sexual harassment being a nightmare of the past.

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