SEXUAL HARRASSEMENT AT WORK PLACE

There was a discussion on Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus at ibibo last week when a blogger had a post on it. Are men from Mars? Mars stands for military prowess , chivalry, dignity and according to palmistry Martians put sex before love; the last which calls for the proverb mentioned in the first line. Well, we do not know whether the soporific jobs behind the computer consoles that most of our men end up as, has resulted in the emasculation of all the other Martian qualities of Modern Indian men. But some reflection of the male –female work place ethics vis a vis this concept of sex before love and love before sex would help us straighten the dichotomy between our two sexes.

Modern labour laws in India has been very kind to women as under the Labour Act, the following can be reported as SEXUAL HARRASSMENT AT WORKPLACE; if young women are still not aware of it, they may make a note of.

Making sexual advances
Showing pornographic stuff
Making remarks in a derogatory way on a woman’s person,ie..referring to one’s physical appearance
Taking the liberty of sharing a men’s joke( sex joke) in the presence of a woman employee in the office premises during official hours.
Deliberate touching , brushing, nudging a woman’s person , pretending it to be accidental.
Last of course, extracting a sexual favour for a promotion/ loan sanction/pay hike; which innumerable women have complained as a work hazard to be considered the biggest unpardonable crime at a workplace.

Luckily my job as a teacher has very little to do with men. Yet we do associate with men in a different way. They are young men who flirt, have a fling or fall in love with the women about their own age. Thank God they are still civil enough to regard some of us as mothers and stand up in submission and quiet respect, for, they repose their future at our hands, for us to shape as we please. It will take society some more time before it crumbles low enough to have men asking their teacher to a date!

Yet, in retrospect, this news puts me in mind to my experience as a young researcher ten years ago, I tried to do research at a certain University where I was working on a project. The Project head was twenty years older than me and was so self-conscious in my presence that he would always speak on the telephone for half an hour everytime I approached him to discuss the project. I concluded that he was probably woman-shy and stopped meeting him for that purpose. I would sit at my table for hours on end and design the project myself and then take it to him for a discussion so that he would be saved the embarrassment of having to sit face to face to talk it out. Things appeared to become better as he could stare at the records and papers while talking to me. But the everyday meeting did something to him and he began to buy gifts for me. Although, I was intrigued at this abnormal gesture, I wondered how such a shy person could change so much. Then he suggested that I could register for research under him on the very topic that we were conducting experiments and it could be mutually benefiting both me and his pet project.

An interview was conducted and out of about twenty candidates, six of us were selected for doing research work under three guides. I was to do it with my Project head. Luckily for me, the five women were very friendly and we immediately got into a nice rapport with each other. They said their guides were women and why had I to register under a male as not all of them were gentlemen fit enough to be counted as guides. Granted, there still are good and noble men in this world who will be good guides, why do we need to take risk!

I appreciated their concern and said that if I smelt a rat, I would throw it without fanfare. And just as these wise women had predicted, no sooner had this man become my Guide, his attitude towards me was to get closer.Funny! Everyday he would suggest that he won’t mind dropping me at home which I anyway declined as I had my own vehicle.

Then one day he offered to take me to a movie. I thought it was rather odd to go for a movie with such a respect worthy person and expressed most politely that any day , I would prefer going to movies with my family rather than with male colleagues. Soon I began to be discomfited as things were not very smooth working with a person who comes up every day with suggestive remarks for private meeting. The tension was mounting high and one fine morning, I dropped both my job and the idea of research work altogether, in spite of the dismay on the part of my parents who had spent a lot of money as first term fee.

Three years later, I again registered under a lady guide and submitted my work much later than my friends, but with out any trouble. My friends at the university later divulged to me that my action was the wisest thing I could do as this individual and the coterie that he mingles with had a tendency to extract sexual favour outright at the time of submission of thesis, and they would not process it at the final stage unless they were suitably favoured. I replied that even at that stage, I wouldnot have minded a sacrifice of a three year hard work, as nothing was more valuable to me than my own self. The problem is mebbe for women who minddd!!!!

Yet it is a matter of pain that many men are incapable of forging purely asexual friendship /relationship with women ..... would that they did! I am sure we might then have more lasting friendhsips in this little world. Coming back to my topic, yeah! A harassment is a harassment and the troubler's acheivement is that he has caused the professional loss as a punishment for the disregard ;and does the labour law enactment board help us to get a compensation in return from the harasser? Nobody knows! Nobody cares much for such trivial things, you see...

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