Sexual harassment complaints in India’s top publicly traded companies have seen a significant increase of 70% during FY23 compared to the previous year, indicating heightened awareness and better reporting avenues, reports Mint.
Key findings: A total of 755 cases were registered in FY23 across 23 of the 30 Sensex companies that have released their annual reports. This contrasts with 451 cases in FY22.
- The highest numbers were reported at Wipro (141), Infosys (78), Tech Mahindra (74), HDFC Bank (68), HCL Technologies (55), Kotak Mahindra Bank (55), Tata Consultancy Services (49), State Bank of India (46), Tata Steel (38), and Axis Bank (34).
- While Prevention of Sexual Harassment (POSH) guidelines mandate that a harassment case gets resolved within 90 days, firms typically take about a month. In FY23, the companies disposed of 612 cases compared to 434 in FY22.
What they’re saying: Aparna Mittal, founder of Samāna Centre for Gender, Policy and Law, said, “It would be a mistake to assume that sexual harassment cases did not occur before this, but earlier, one wasn’t even sure what constituted sexual harassment and what remedies were available to a victim.”
- The report also highlighted new forms of harassment after people were introduced to the hybrid work system post-pandemic. “There is an increase in ghost accounts created to harass an employee. In some cases, it is a group of people coming together to leave inappropriate comments on social-media posts of a colleague,” Nirmala Menon, founder of Interweave Consulting, said.
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