Millions Of Indian Women Exposed To Workplace Abuse As Gov't Fails To Act - Rights Group

Millions of women in India are still being subject to abuse in the workplace as the country's government fails to fully implement sexual harassment laws, a prominent rights group said in a fresh report on Wednesda

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 14th October, 2020) Millions of women in India are still being subject to abuse in the workplace as the country's government fails to fully implement sexual harassment laws, a prominent rights group said in a fresh report on Wednesday.

"India has progressive laws to protect women from sexual abuse by bosses, colleagues, and clients, but has failed to take basic steps to enforce these laws," Meenakshi Ganguly, the South Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said in a press release accompanying the group's report.

The Indian government should work urgently to ensure full compliance with the country's 2013 Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace Act, which was passed to establish safe working spaces for women and a mechanism for bringing complaints forward, the rights group said.

According to data provided by the Complykaro Services firm, 823 cases of workplace harassment were opened in India's largest companies in the 2019 fiscal year, a 14 percent year-on-year rise.

The Indian government in June 2019 voted in favor of the International Labour Organization's Violence and Harassment Convention, a wide-ranging document that seeks to establish baseline global standards to protect women in the workplace.