CHENNAI: Is the nearabsence of sexual harassment cases among young IT professionals a pointer to the fact that there are no such incidents happening? Hardly so. Experts are of the opinion that the women employees suffer such harassment regularly but they rarely come out and complain. This is largely attributed to the failure of IT companies in inculcating gender sensitivity among employees.“Many leading companies have sexual harassment committee as per the recommendation of the Vishakha guidelines, but they exists only on paper,” said Vijayalakshmi, President, Empowering Women in IT (eWIT), which works among women IT employees to sensitise them on various aspects of gender issues. “Many companies don’t have women IT professional as members of the committee and didn’t conduct any meeting to sensitise them on gender issues.” The members of eWIT have stressed to the heads of member IT companies to educate their employees on the various aspects of gender issues, but no progress so far. “Only if members of both sexes were sensitised on these aspects, the employees would understand their limitations of behaviour and work in harmony,” she added.Officials of the Tamil Nadu State Commission for Women concur with Vijayalakshmi. Though the commission at present doesn’t have a chairperson, the second level officers claim that they did not receive any progress report of women harassment committee from the IT companies.On the question of women IT professional safety at the public place, Assistant Commissioner of Police, KN Murali, who till recently worked in Thoraipakkam police range where many IT companies have their office, said that they face sexual harassment but did not complain to the police.Murali attribute the reason for the IT professional facing sexual harassment to the cultural factor. Many IT professionals who work in Chennai are not from TN, they have come from various parts of country including New Delhi, Andhra Pradesh, North East and Mumbai. “They wear dresses like jeans and sleeveless tops. Wearing dresses is their personal choice, but when they go for a short walk during late nights after long hours of work, they fall victim to local rogues,” said Murali.Murali, during his tenure at Thoraipakkam police range, conducted meetings with the IT professionals staying in the women’s hostels and advised them to move around in groups during night hours and also carry pepper spray with them.Going one step further, C Sylendra Babu, Inspector General of Police, North Zone, said that women should equip themselves with self-defense techniques.“It is not just the IT professional, women in general face harassment in the public place, but to escape from miscreants women should use selfdefense,” he said.Pointing out an example from Japan, Sylendra Babu said that when a car driver kidnapped an 11-year-girl to an isolated place and attempted to rape her, the girl beat him up using karate techniques. The driver, who was unable to defend himself, pleaded with the girl to stop beating and dropped her back home, he said.Another senior police officer said that most of the IT companies do not have their own transport system and tie up with private transport companies. “This again puts the women IT professional at risk at the hands of the cab drivers,” said the officer.
Comments
0 comment