Rising cases under PoSH Act point to better reporting
- 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.
Key highlights
- 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.
Prelims Takeaway
- POSH act