Awareness Amongst Beneficiaries, Pushes Companies To Implement Laws Better

Written By Rituparna Chatterjee, 🖊  edited  by Varna

Alka Singh, the in-house legal counsel with Bounceshare.com, a rental scooter and bike service that provides affordable rentals to commuters, in a conversation with Rituparna Chatterjee, Ungender Legal Advisory’s Director of Communication, speaks of the many ways companies typically subvert a law intented to protect women, while claiming to ensure compliance when it comes to prevention of sexual harassment. Singh, who is a PoSH expert, lays down several measures from years of experience in this sector on how companies can better support women.  

Q: How have you been functioning during the lockdown? Was work affected?

A: One area of difficulty, particularly with PoSH cases, is the problems that the inability  to hold in-person meetings results in. Especially where PoSH is concerned, people seem to be very uncomfortable doing Zoom calls.

Q: How can laws that affect women’s right to work, be better implemented in companies, especially in the post COVID world?

A: I strongly feel that awareness of PoSH law has to grow, especially for  women and everyone in a management role. Nothing is more important than a woman employee knowing her rights and potential course of action should she ever be harassed. I consistently, as in-house counsel, keep telling women that when the very first instance of sexual harassment has happened, speak up.

Don’t doubt yourself – a lot of women before reporting decide to second guess “it was harassment or not”, that is what an IC is supposed to do, not the victim. 

 Q. Would you then say that the lack of legal education translates into  endangering one’s own safety? 

A: I feel it’s the biggest challenge right now, is educating people. Sexual harassment, especially in corporate set ups, can be subtle and may at times confuse the person. This applies to men and women. The second issue is that companies lack the know-how about how to deal with incidents – ICs do not know how to investigate and policies are lacking.

Companies want to ignore cases of sexual harassment because ‘the world will get to know’, which again, makes the situation worse, the inability to do something then becomes a self-perpetuating cycle. So, we need to acknowledge that these things do happen, then make aware, and then take proper recourse.  It’s a big culture issue for any organization. 

Q: What are the gaps in implementation? Do you see companies struggling to be compliant, given the number of people who complained of being harassed during the metoo movement, we rarely see these numbers reflected in the annual report of companies. 

A: Companies like to do something called “mediation”. Most cases that come up under PoSH are just “settled”. There is a difference between mediation and settlement, mediation refers to a legal process where a qualified mediator is appointed to mediate between both parties, sometimes qualified mediators can be private too – but the key principle is a qualified third-party mediator and due process.

The purpose of mediation is to reach a settlement between parties. When companies just “settle” they do this without due process of mediation and often it is a compromise not reached between the two parties but one where the company steps in and say pays a compensation to one party or authorises a different resolution. In these cases aside of the lack of a legal mediation process there is no third-party mediator at all.  This is where the reduction of the number happens. 

I have mostly been involved with the startup ecosystem, in these types of groups there are very young people who work round the clock and they spend lots of time together. So awareness is needed, much more,  because the probability (of harassment) is more.

For example, many youngsters do not know that the definition of workplace extends to outside the physical office, many times they are completely unaware about codes of conduct or a certain behavior pattern they exhibit. 

In my experience, there is always the question of “interpretation”, if there are fewer fires, it does not mean there is no crime. The question is what does one do about what seems like harassment, sometimes it is not harassment but a violation of a code of conduct and that too is a valid instrument to influence culture at work. Bounce is very prompt about these issues and the IC is very impartial. 

Q: What are the three laws that you would want everyone to know about at work?

A: The PoSH Act and then I think the Maternity Benefit Act as far as laws are concerned. A lot of companies no longer think that women who are expecting are a liability and that is because the law is explicit.

Always good to read  laws related to employment — read your contract. Be wise enough to understand your own employment agreement, haste in signing a contract work contract is a problem.

Also Read: It Is Time To Review Your Anti-Sexual Harassment Policy

About the author: Rituparna Chatterjee is a journalist with close to two decades of experience in journalism, working across media platforms, and tracking ground-up stories of feminist movements, social inequalities, gaps in gender discourse, and communities. She currently oversees communications for Ungender Legal Advisory

Ungender Insights is the product of our learning from advisory work at Ungender. Our team specializes in advising workplaces on workplace diversity and inclusion. Write to us at contact@ungender.in to understand how we can partner with your organization to build a more inclusive workplace.