In the recent assembly elections, we were once again inundated with information about how much of a difference the women’s vote made to the outcome. Indeed, in many places, they seemed to have swung the election quite decisively and schemes that prioritized their needs were seen as a major factor behind the way they voted.
Having said this, given the ingrained violence against women and the systemic issues they face, it is not surprising that once elections are over, it is back to a very hard grind for many women, especially those in the informal sector like agriculture. A study by Nalini Nayak on behalf of SEWA Bharat on women in agriculture shows that apart from the physical labor of transplanting, weeding, harvesting, and carrying headloads of produce, the working conditions of women farmers, especially the marginal ones, are grueling. They have little to no health care, no maternity leave, and no protection from the harsh climate conditions in which they work. Sexual harassment is a constant for many of them.
The Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) 2013 (POSH) Act, in its present form, has only the local committee mechanism to deal with workplace abuse for informal workers. Nayak says, “These committees have been created in many states, but the people on the committee know very little about the workplaces of informal workers like the streets for street vendors, the homes of the home-based workers, the forests for the forest workers. , and so on. Hence, they do not understand how to deal with such cases. Moreover, the resolution mechanism is very vague as committees cannot take any punitive action.”
She calls for a rethink on POSH implementation in the informal sector. “While every department and agency laments the lack of coordination among different departments in dealing with the issue, no serious effort is made to develop a convergent action plan and establish clear responsibilities and mechanisms for accountability. Nor is there any serious effort to centrestage the insights and experiences of survivors,” she says.
In the case of domestic workers, where the workplace is the employer’s home, there are examples of workers taking complaints to the local committee. In such cases, the employers say the complaints are fake and filed in response to action taken against theft by the domestic worker. Such backfiring ensures workers choose to just leave the job rather than complain.
Although India is one of the few countries with a law against workplace sexual harassment, the implementation is limited, with a lack of actionable content.
Female agricultural workers face severe exploitation and violence that goes unaddressed due to their fear of losing work, social stigma, and power dynamics that favor landowners and male counterparts. These women work on farms they do not own, either under sharecropping arrangements or for daily wages. Their jobs are equally stressful, yet they are paid less than men.
The harassment they face often escalates to sexual violence.
Women’s groups like SEWA Bharat have advocated a different mechanism under the POSH Act for informal workers: The committees need to be differently constituted involving local social organizations. They also need to reach out to workers through surveys and interviews instead of waiting for complaints. Further, the findings of the committees need to be taken seriously and the committees should have the power to summon the perpetrator as well as to file cases against them if found guilty. Adds Renana Jhabwala of SEWA, “Ninety per cent of women working in the informal economy face violence including sexual in the workplace. Although the POSH Act includes them in theory, in practice they have no protection. A strong mechanism is needed at the district and local levels to make workplaces safe for women.”
The views expressed are personal
