Shocking Reality exposed! Indian Men are MORE vulnerable to Sexual Harassment as compared to Women!
The Honourable Prime Minister of India
South Block, Raisina Hill,
New Delhi,
India-110 101.
Sub: Requesting the Law ministry to draft law to protect Indian Males from Sexual Harassment at Workplace.
Honorable Prime Minister,
Shocking Reality exposed! Indian Men are MORE vulnerable to Sexual Harassment as compared to Women!
The Prestigious Indian news paper “The Economic Times” along with another very credible global market research company, Synovate conducted an extensive survey to expose the truth from the dubious assumptions and false facts, which the Indian citizenry were so far subjected to by the women’s ministry and some women’s organizations. Below are the shocking facts from the survey.
As part of this very credible and extensive research 527 people queried in the survey across seven cities in the country -Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Mumbai and Pune. Below are excerpts from the report to expose how often Males are sexually harassed.
a) Bangalore: – Half of who agreed that they have been sexually harassed at their workplace said they have been harassed by their female colleagues. Only 32% said that they were harassed by Male colleagues.
b) Hyderabad: – 29% of said they have been sexually harassed by their female bosses while 48% accused their male bosses.
c) Delhi: – Numbers are even, with 43% pointing a finger at their female colleagues and an equal number accusing their male colleagues of sexual harassment.
d) 38% of the respondents agreed that in today’s workplaces, even men are as vulnerable to sexual harassment as women. In Hyderabad and Mumbai, 55% of the respondents agreed to this point.
e) Many of the corporate and PSUs, ET spoke to, agree to this new trend and point out that many male employees do not come out in the open and file complaints because they feel they will not be believed, considering India’s social beliefs. They usually seek a transfer to get out of the situation or find a new job.
From the above facts of the report it can be concluded that Sexual Harassment of Males at Workplace in India is more than that of women since in most cases males do not even file complaints for the fear of Social ridicule. Given the current reality will the Honorable aforementioned be pleased to answer how the WCD ministry was allowed to make such an deliberate mistake of ignoring male sexual harassment , while drafting the Bill of “Sexual Harassment at Workplace”?
India is not the only country where males face harassment at workplace .The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s (EEOC) data , shows that the percentage of complaints from Men increased from 11.6% in FY 1997 to 16% in FY 2009 showing that men are increasingly being victimized. The total number of sexual harassment cases in 2009 has now increased to 12,700 per year. The percentage of men sexually harassed and their numbers (12700) is simply far too high to be ignored. The United States Equal Employment opportunity commission (EEOC) has stated that “sexual harassment filings by men has consistently increased doubling over 15 years“.
A 2006 government study in the United Kingdom revealed that 2 out of 5 sexual harassment victims in the UK are male, with 8% percent of all sexual harassment complaints to the Equal Opportunities Commission (Britain’s EEOC), coming from men. The UK’s “Equal Opportunities Commission’s Code of Practice on Sex Discrimination” clearly spells out that protection from sexual harassment protection is available for both men and women. The Sexual Harassment at workplace policies prevalent in most of the nations today take cognizance of the facts mentioned above and are gender neutral. According to a report on Sexual harassment at workplace by United Nations Economic Commission of Europe – Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, The Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom have policies for Sexual Harassment that are gender neutral. Even our neighboring Pakistan has gender neutral laws.
Government’s opinion is hijacked by radical feminists
The Indian government’s opinion has lately been hijacked by a few Govt and non government feminists women’s organizations. The government acts and behaves and supports the views of these few women’s groups as if it is unaware of ground realities in India and how gender laws and drafted with total disregard to principles of natural justice , the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, credible research data, Global Facts and figures, public opinion or even common sense.
Unlike the west where the public trusts its government to take care of either gender, India has a starkly different scenario. The drafting committees of these laws just serve to expose their ignorance and understanding of the issue at hand and Anti-Male stance by drafting laws of this nature. Gender laws in India are not created to attack the problem; they are created to attack males instead. It can be concluded beyond reasonable doubt that gender laws are created to appease a minority radical feminist lobby. The sad thing is that even the most powerful of the government ministries like some sections of the Law Ministry and the Home Ministry and many powerful Government departments instead to taking stand against these feminist lobbies, appease them instead or at least agree to whatever they say without questioning the facts or logic used while drafting these laws. The best example of this type of contrived and downright dubious “Anti Men” gender lawmaking is the Proposed Sexual Harassment at Workplace Bill.
Does the Vishaka Judgement Hold good even today ?
The laws of India are twice as old as India itself and the legislature for reasons known best to it seems to find it enormous difficult to amend and change laws like adultery which were created more than a century ago. On the same lines the Honorable Supreme court had passed the Vishakha Judgement that was best suited for the prevailing conditions in 90’s. The Indian social structure have undergone tremendous upheaval, since thereafter, and now it is the men who are found to constantly at the receiving end of the harassment at the workplace, as the Economic times rightly points out.
Even after the Vishakha Judgment was delivered no attempt was made to gather true and unbiased data on the lines of the economic times survey from either the World or India to understand, if the problem of Sexual harassment is a Gender Neutral problem or is a women’s only problem. As a consequence the drafting committee of the proposed Sexual harassment law most ignorantly assumed that Sexual Harassment like a rape is a crime of passion and can be committed by men on women.
The present Sexual Harassment at Workplace Bill also misses another very important fact that Sexual Harassment unlike Rape is not a crime of passion, but is a crime of power and whosoever is a position of power can commit this crime irrespective of gender. Thus the present format of the Bill, essentially views Sexual harassment as a crime of passion like Sexual Assault and has totally ignored any protection for males.
80% of the country is corrupt and handing corrupt people the means to extort will result in anarchy.
The outgoing CVC chief openly stated that about 30% of Indians are utterly corrupt and about 50% are on the borderline and can be corrupted if presented with a situation. Given that over 80% of the country is corrupt, what is the justification behind creating laws which can be easily used as weapon for extortion. From the above data it can be concluded with reasonable accuracy that given that half the country is composed of women , over 40% of the Indian women are also corrupt.
The facts of the CVC can be verified and the measured on the scale of misuse of laws by women and their family members to extort money whenever presented with a lucrative situation where money can be made.
Almost every day there are articles in the press on how Indian women do not think twice before filing false sexual harassment charges for ulterior motives. No matter what the issue of disgruntlement is Sexual harassment is used as a weapon of choice by Indians to malign others . There have also been cases Husbands have instigated wives to use this false allegations of harassment to get even with Male colleagues of the Husband. When dealing with such an irresponsible population the government must be extremely cognizant of what sort of wording is used in the law so that it does not serve to aid a person’s ulterior motive.
Some high profile media covered instances of Misuse of the Sexual harassment allegations are listed below.
Some Sexual harassment Blacklist examples
- Airhostess Komal Singh Case :- Both Air India and Apex feminist body of India NCW ruled that airhostess Komal Singh was not molested, but even then she preferred to use sexual harassment charges against the pilots . Further investigation unearthed serious indiscipline and misconduct by the airhostess in a flight full of people to cover which these allegations were leveled. Komal singh never received any punishment for misusing the law or will the pilots be compensated for loss of reputation?
- General Nanda case :- A court of inquiry (COI) into the allegations against Army’s engineer-in- chief Lt-Gen A K Nanda has exonerated him, while recommending disciplinary action against Colonel C P S Pasricha, who accused the general of sexually harassing his wife. However will Colonel Pasricha’s wife ever receiving punishment for maligning the reputation of a General? Probably not.
- Female Wrestler Sonika Kaliraman case :- Indian female grappler Sonika Kaliraman’s recent allegations of sexual harassment by the selection committee and coaching staff of WFI was dismissed by her own teammates, who described the charges as “baseless and “malicious”. In a letter, signed by as many as 30 female wrestlers members, including famous ones like Uma Devi, Alka Tomar, Babita Singh among others, supported the selection trial and termed the complainant Sonika as undisciplined, irresponsible and frustrated.
The blacklist of misuse if continued in itself consume the entire volume of the letter and is a open example than given an opportunity there will be people more then eager to misuse loosely drafted laws to achieve ulterior gains.
Flaws with the present proposed draft of “Sexual Harassment at Workplace Bill”
1. Constitutional Violation
A subsection of an article in a constitution (Article 15(3)) cannot be used to overrule the main article in the constitution (Article 15). Article 15(3) of the constitution merely provides for special provisions for women and children, it does not permit the framing of special laws which will violate the essence of the Main Article 15. Had that been the case, the constitution of India will become self contradictory. Article 15(3) of the constitution although does allow the government to make special provisions for women, but the same article cannot be used to overlook the fact that women too can be perpetrators of the crime and absolve women from getting prosecuted for committing the same offence.
2. Clear Violation of Vishakha Guidelines
The SHWB is based on the guidelines laid down in the landmark Vishakha judgment by the Honorable Supreme Court. The guidelines mentioned in the judgement nowhere mentions that a prequalification to be a member of the Sexual harassment Committee is that the person “shall be committed to the cause of women”. However, by involving NGOs “committed to the cause of women”, the government of India has blatantly violated the honourable Supreme Court guidelines. Such deliberate language will only intensify the existing bias against males which is inherent in the 15 odd anti male laws currently existing.
3. Economically disastrous recommendation
By making it mandatory to pay remuneration to the committee members irrespective of instances of sexual harassment reported, creates unnecessary financial burden on companies. In times of global recession such financial burden will only lead to further economic losses to Indian companies. It will lead to an increase in poverty, crime and corruption.
4. Justice delivery mechanism will become a fish market
NGOs and their appointees will have to be paid after getting appointed to the committee even if there are no instances or cases of Sexual Harassment at all. The involvement of the payment model will lead to NGOs selling justice for a price and NGOs competing with each other to get appointed into committees to get financial payouts.
5. Punishment for misuse is not “Mandatory”, but “Discretionary”
By making punishment for misuse discretionary, the bill opens the scope for negotiation between the parties to either avoid punishment or settle the matter. This provision will also lead to motivation for filing more and more false cases to settle personal scores – A trend very commonly observed in the use of section 498a and Domestic Violence Act of 2005.
6. News of False cases/Misuse will be legally suppressed
In a democratic nation, transparency is the key to success of governance. To ensure the same the government of India has benevolently gifted the RTI act to the citizens of India, but the same government is including provisions in this bill to prevent the use of RTI act to unearth false cases filed under the act. This is nothing but double standards on part of the government.
7. Bargaining “Punishment” with “settlement “ of cases
By legally providing a mechanism to bargain punishment with settlement the act in itself becomes a tool for “legal extortion”. This will also initiate a rat race among NGOs to have themselves represented in various companies in order to grab a pie of settlement. Such trends will undermine the real essence of the act and a parallel extortion industry will start spawning.
8. Unconstitutional and undemocratic process followed during the drafting of the bill
RTI responses have exposed that during the drafting of the Sexual Harassment at workplace bill, the WCD ministry had received numerous representations from concerned Indian citizens to make the SHWB law gender neutral but did not heed to any one of them. If public opinion of making the law gender neutral is to be finally totally trampled with, then why carry the farce of calling suggestions, in the name of democratic law making, from the citizenry and then discard it?
The WCD ministry chose to trample all the representations by the below outrageously sexist statements degrading the modesty of men as compared to women. The WCD ministry stated the below.
“The overwhelming nature of sexual harassment is sexual harassment of women on account of their female sex. Harassment of men cannot be put on the same footing character wise or incidence wise. Protection of men is also not the mandate of Ministry of WCD”.
1) “The overwhelming nature of sexual harassment is sexual harassment of women on account of their female sex”
This is a totally false and unscientific “assumption” that the WCD makes and has been disproved by the Economic times survey.The WCD Ministry or the Supreme Court does not have any data to back this argument because the government of India has not spent either a single rupee or conducted a single credible study on men’s issues in this area. On the contrary, credible research all over the world including India shows that men are increasingly falling victims to sexual harassment crimes every year. The US, the UK, the whole of European Union and even Pakistan has gender neutral sexual harassment laws. Drafting laws based on hallucinated assumptions can lead to disastrous social consequences and cannot be allowed.
2) “Harassment of men cannot be put on the same footing character wise or incidence wise”
The WCD ministry must be called upon to explain the meaning of this sentence and on what basis they
concluded that the harassment of men is on a lesser footing than women. Does the WCD consider men
any less of human beings than women? Is the stigma and suffering of a man any less than women if sexually harassed at workplace? The comments of WCD are openly violating Article 15 of the Constitution, which prohibits against any discrimination on grounds of sex and cannot be held with any credibility.
3) “Protection of men is also not the mandate of Ministry of WCD”
The WCD ministry is absolutely right in its above observation. Having said that, as they officially accept
they do not represent more than 50% of the population; they have no moral or social right whatsoever to draft a law affecting the whole population of India. It is as good as saying that the honorable Prime Minister will allow the drafting of some law concerning Hindus and Muslims by a ministry that openly claims that it does not have the mandate to protect the Muslims. Will it not lead to religious war? Then how come, such stances by the WCD cannot incite gender war?
Creation of a Government Fund to compensate victims of Sexual Harassment law
Since the government has chosen to remain blissfully ignorant on the plight of Indian males infact being repeatedly reminded and shown the ground realities by NGO’s , courts newspapers and TV , the government also own up to compensate the victims of the misuse of the laws it has drafted and supported. I recommend that the Government create a separate MISUSE FUND for each biased anti male gender law it has drafted and supported and use it to compensate the victims of the misuse. With this the government will deliver on twin targets of adequately compensating the victims of misuse and successfully continuing to appease a few radical Govt and non government women’s organizations thereby allowing the creation of gender biased laws. The Budget for the fund can be sought from the fund of the WCD or the NCW since they play the most active role in drafting such contrived and dubious gender laws.
Demands/Recommendations
a) A new Sexual harassment Bill be drafted ONLY FOR MEN since from the data it is clear that men are the ones who are the majority of victims.
b) Proper sections be incorporated in the law to counsel men and encourage them to report sexual harassment either from women or other men. In other words provisions must exist to help men overcome the social stigma comparing sexual harassment
c) Creation of a government funded “misuse fund” to compensate victims of false allegations of Sexual harassment when cases of misuse are detected.
d) Removal of the ministries like WCD and NCW which are filled with ideologues with Misandry from lawmaking and replacing them with gender neutral and sane ministries who will consider the principles of natural justice or the universal declaration of human rights, credible research data, global Facts and figures, public opinion and most importantly even common sense while drafting laws.
e) The mandatory inclusion of National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) as a watchdog group in every gender law making committee so that men are not deliberately discriminated against and Article 15 of the Constitution is not violated again and Article 15 (3) is not wrongly interpreted and that the people’s opinion are not brutally trampled as has been done in the Sexual Harassment at Workplace Bill.
f) The mandatory inclusion of corporate bodies like FICCI, CII, ASSOCHAM and a corporate committee comprising an equal number of male and female members from the industry so that interests of both genders are kept in mind while drafting laws to truly achieve a equal opportunity workplace.
g) Involving external NGO based on legal knowledge and their background of delivering justice on merits and not merely being women’s rights champions.
h) Allowing the reporting of all cases true or false in the media so that the magnitude of use or misuse can be measured in the present proposed draft of “Sexual Harassment at Workplace Bill”
i) Provision of any sort of settlement must be removed the present proposed draft of “Sexual Harassment at Workplace Bill”. The accused must be either punished or the complaint must be deemed as false and action taken by default against the complainant.
Thanking you
Yours truly,
“Life Isnt About Finding Yourself…
Life is about Creating Yourself…”
http://misogynit.wordpress.com/
Thanks n regards
Misogynit
misogynit
