Extension/ Outreach Activities

AULSC LEGAL AID INITIATIVES 2019-2020

A Study to Determine the Extent of Implementation of Sexual Harassment at Workplace (Prevention and Redressal) Act,2013 at Biocon, Electronic City, Bangalore.

Socio-legal research

A socio-legal research was undertaken by a group of students of Alliance School of Law, Alliance University, Bangalore, namely Miss Ipsita Sarkar, Miss Ishita Garg, Miss Soumava Gangopadhyay on the  a topic “A Study to Determine the Extent of Implementation of Sexual Harassment at Workplace (Prevention and Redressal ) Act, 2013 at Biocon, Electronic city, Bangalore.

The main aim of conducting this research was to see how the implementation and execution of the Sexual Harassment at Workplace (Prevention and Redressal) Act, 2013 was being done in Biocon area of Electronic city in Bangalore. The main reason why the area was selected as the area for research because Biocon is hub of number of local and multinational companies. Some of them are famous names in the corporate sector.

Therefore, the students wanted to see how the implementation of the anti-sexual harassment Act was being done by these companies The research involved surveying of government as well as private institutions and carefully observing how the Act was being implemented by these organizations and to what extent. The number of the cases which have been registered by them and the action that have taken and how much time it has taken for the grievance redressal. It was also assessed whether the rule of law and fair hearing approach was adopted in these proceedings or not.

The research is a blend of both doctrinal as well as non-doctrinal research, whereby legal provisions as-well-as judicial decisions have been analyzed under Doctrinal research and under Non-doctrinal research the team had undertaken an empirical research where they have surveyed the government as well as private institutions.

During the survey they have collected number of data, 52% men and 48% women participated in this survey. It was further bifurcated into age groups. 36% of the people were between 20-30 age group, 44% were between 31-45, while 16% were between 46 to 55, only 4% were above 55. Total 80% of the people were between 20-45 emancipating that majority of the women are prone to sexual harassment are between this age group.

The group also analyzed the year of work experience. 40% of the people have below 5 years of work experience. 32% had 6 to 10 years of experience and 28% had 10 and more years of experience. The Group was able to find that out total people who have suffered sexual harassment 56% didn’t know that they had any rights and the can approach the authorities.

What was even astonishing that only in 24% cases some action was taken rest ended with no results. There were 48% of the people who did not know about the law that mandated establishing of an Internal Complaint Committee for investigation of the matter.

The outcome of the research is that there are more steps which must be taken in order to make the people more aware of their rights they have. Without which the purpose of the Act will be defeated. It must be the responsibility of the government and local authorities and employer as well that there must be some workshop every quarterly where the women employees must be made aware of the legal rights they have. Moreover, the government must be stricter towards the organizations who fail to implement the provisions of the Act and guidelines of the Supreme Court.

This project was taken as a drive to examine whether the welfare laws made for providing equal opportunities to the women are implemented in word and spirit. Simultaneously students created awareness regarding the existing law and their rights.