India, the seventh-largest country in the world and the largest democracy in the world, has been in complete denial of what happens in the organizational community. The very reason that the workplace community sometimes neglects or underreports the cases is unfathomable.
India consists of varied types of organizations, start-ups, successful large-scale businesses, small-scale yet successful businesses, and more. In all these sectors, workplace harassment is inevitable.
Around 54% of Indians have reported workplace sexual harassment. 55% of Indians report having being bullied at the workplace. In both these cases, one thing is common. That is more than half of the employees in the country face sexual harassment and bullying at the workplace.
Now the most nerve-wracking reality is that more than 70% of working women in the country do not report their cases of sexual harassment. This is probably due to several reasons which they weigh more than actually reporting the problem.
The fear of losing one’s job, fear of being cornered in society, family members and more, could be a few reasons why women hesitate to report. Other reasons could include not knowing what sexual harassment is.
Most women don’t realize that they have been sexually harassed until someone mentions a similar story. That is when they relate to the unfairness they have gone through.
In other cases, everybody normalizes someone’s behavior by saying things like ‘You know how he is like know’, ‘try avoiding him as much as you can’, ‘pretend like you don’t exist only’.
These phrases subconsciously result in women believing that they should or function tip-toeing and that they should always be careful about events like these not to occur. They also end up believing if something happens acutely to majorly they were at fault.
What is even more traumatizing is the psychological events that a harassment survivor or victim’s faces. Their mental health deteriorates, they become depressed, develop different types of anxieties. They can also end up having distorted body image, sexual disorders, OCD, and more.
For those who’ve experienced workplace sexual harassment, their workplace might no longer feel safe. This may hurt their workplace relations, their productivity, focus, and overall engagement in work, and may ultimately lead them to resign from the company or even from the industry entirely.
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