‘Sexual harassment at workplace underreported in Nagaland’
Most of the sexual harassment at workplace goes unreported in Nagaland, as the victim is scared to report; some ignore the subject and some even fail to identify the offence, according to Garcy Aye Co-ordinator, State Resource Centre for Women Nagaland.
Participating in a webinar on Sexual harassment in the workplaces in Nagaland context, two days ago, Aye stated that although the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) report indicates declining trend of sexual harassment or violence in the state, data from One Stop Centres showed otherwise. “The NCRB data was not a reflection of the ground reality and moreover we have our customary law/court in place,” she added.
Sexual harassment, she said, is not a battle of sexes but it needed a larger section to start a campaign and urged the public to speak up if someone around them was a victim or an abuser ‘as ignorance can be dangerous’.
Nagaland Inspector General of Police—India Reserve Battalion (IRBn)-- Sonia Singh, another speaker at the webinar, said that the police play a major role in reporting sexual harassment at work place cases. She added that the victims fear being labelled, hence often do not come forward to complain.
“Our aim is to see if the organisations or the implementing agencies are working in place; see if the victim is getting justice, while our aim is not to tamper the laws,” Singh said.
The webinar was hosted by North East Institute of Social Science and Research in collaboration with Prodigal’s Home and Miglat Ministry.
Another speaker, advocate Thejavino Pienyu defined sexual harassment as an act of physical contact and advances involving unwelcome and explicit sexual overtures; a demand or request for sexual favours; showing pornography against the will of a woman/man or making sexually coloured remarks.
Pienyu said that 90 per cent of the workplace harassment is never officially reported, and in Nagaland, there is no reported case of sexual harassment at workplaces.
In order to educate the participants about what amounts to sexual harassment at workplace, she said, “Verbal/ written harassment include comments about clothing, personal behaviour or a person's body; sexual or sex-based jokes requesting sexual favours or repeatedly asking a person out; sexual innuendos; spreading rumours about a person's personal or sexual life; threatening a person; and sending emails or text messages of a sexual nature.
“A non-verbal /visual harassment is an act of looking up and down a person's body; derogatory gestures or facial expressions of a sexual nature; following a person, displaying or showing someone posters, drawings, pictures, screensavers, emails or texts of a sexual nature,” she stated.