DECODING SHe-BOX – GOI’s portal for filing sexual harassment at workplace complaints online

The Protection of Women from Sexual Harassment at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act (POSH Act), 2013 was enacted by the Government of India (GoI) with the objective to create a safe and secure workplace for women free from sexual harassment. This statute superseded the Vishakha Guidelines for prevention of sexual harassment introduced by the Supreme Court of India, which were a set of procedural guidelines for use in India in cases of sexual harassment.

In recent development, the Ministry of Women and Child Development, Government of India (MWCD) has launched a portal for working women to file their sexual harassment complaints online. SHe-Box (sexual harassment electronic box) is an online complaint portal that provides single window access to every working woman across India, which facilitates the registration of complaints related to sexual harassment. Although the portal was launched earlier in July, only women working in the government sector were allowed to file complaints through it. Now, it’s open to women from all sectors, be it organised or unorganised, or public or private.

“We received 346 complaints from women employed in the government sector. Seeing such a huge response we are opening SHe-box to all women who have faced any kind of sexual harassment at the workplace in India.” Maneka Gandhi said at the launch of the SHe-Box. This is a proactive step taken by the MWCD, and as stated by the press release by MWCD, this comes in the wake of the worldwide #MeToo campaign, where women shared their stories of sexual harassment and eve-teasing.

How does the SHe-Box work?

A step by step process of filing a complaint through the SHe-box is as below:

Step 1: A woman who wants to lodge a complaint against sexual harassment at her workplace can go to shebox.nic.in, click on the “Register Your Complaint” tab on the screen.

Step 2:  The next screen will ask information about the nature of office where alleged act(s) of sexual harassment took place (Government/Private); choosing the right tab will open a complaint registration form.

Step 3: After filling all the necessary details, click on the “submit” tab for its submission. Once the complaint is submitted, a confirmation message, is sent to her email id (mentioned in the complaint form), containing a link through which you can use your email id as user id for the account created on SHe-Box and, generate a password to view the status of the complaint from time to time.

Step 4: The complaint, once registered, is sent to the Internal Complaints Committee (ICC) of concerned organisation.

Through the portal, the Ministry of Women and Child Development, as well as the complainant can monitor the progress of inquiry conducted by the ICC/LCC.  Those who have already filed a written complaint with the concerned Internal Complaint Committee (ICC) or Local Complaint Committee (LCC) constituted under the POSH Act,2013 are also eligible to file their complaint through this portal.

What it means for a woman facing sexual harassment?

This mechanism to file complaints online will help address the victim’s fears

The Indian National Bar Association conducted a survey on sexual harassment at workplace between April and October 2016. Around 6,047 participants, both male and female, and 45 victims responded to their questionnaire. Most of the respondents were from sectors like IT, media, education, legal and medical and belonged to cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Kolkata, Lucknow among others.  Around 38 percent of the respondents said they faced sexual harassment in the workplace, out of which around 69 percent of the victims did not complain to the management fearing repercussions or retaliation. The reasons for failure to report such cases were fear, embarrassment, lack of faith in the redressal mechanism, threat of professional victimization among other. The stigma that is attached with sexual harassment can also prevent a woman from filing a complaint.

This portal lets the woman register her complaint online itself, which is then sent to the Internal Complaints Committee of the concerned organisation. Filing of complaints online can address such concerns and can guard the woman from the threats she might face from her employer or her colleagues, pressurising her against filing the complaint, by mitigating the need to file complaints n person.

This will help keep track of complaints and their progress

The e-mail id provided by the individual can be used as the user id for the account created on SHe-Box, which will help keep track of the progress of the complaint. Access to the complaint status invariably means that there’s somebody keeping track of the progress of the complaint, which can be a driving factor for lax organisations to resolve the complaints.

This may encourage women to stand up and file sexual harassment complaints

An online portal for filing complaints can also mean more number of women filing complaints. An easy registration process and access to the status of the complaint will encourage women who don’t have enough faith in the redressal mechanism of their organisations, to file complaints. Monitoring by an external government agency will also ensure them that the inquiry will be carried out in the manner laid down by law.

What it means for the companies?

External entity will act as a check on ICC

An external entity (apart from the Internal Complaints Committee of the organisation) monitoring the progress of the complaint will act as an additional pressure on the organisations to conduct the inquiry fairly, as internal inquiries are often plagued with bias and dismissive attitude towards such complaints.

Speed up the inquiry process

The complaint portal files a complaint with the ICC of the concerned organisation. The government initiative might just impel the whole inquiry process or tie up loose ends, making the ICCs which are not active or are outright negative more active and conscious. But failure to provide any sanctions for workplaces which do not resolve the complaints, or delay their inquiries beyond a certain time frame, makes it something the companies can look over.

What more should be done?

• Awareness about the SH Act and SHe-Box should be paid attention to. Although the government has empanelled 112 institutions to carry out awareness programmes across the country, more needs to be done so that every working woman knows her rights and thus, can act accordingly in the face of any problem she might face at her workplace.
• The implementation and the functioning of the team at the back end is a question on which the success of this online portal depends.
• The ambiguity regarding the filing of complaints of women from the unorganised sector remains intact.
• SHe-Box is available only in English. It should be made available in Hindi and other vernacular languages of India for it to be able to reach more women.
• The SHe-Box still does not provide any redressal mechanism for those women who are working at organisations where there is no ICC in the first place. These organisations may go scot-free because of absence of proper laws and sanctions to deal with them.

The Act, and this initiative have the same objective, that is, making workplaces safer for women and preventing sexual harassment at workplaces, providing a mechanism to punish those who indulge in these practices. This initiative is a step ahead towards realizing the objective by facilitating those who want to file their complaints.

Author: This post has been submitted by Angela Dua, as part of her assignment with Ungender Insights. Angela Dua is currently a student of  Gujarat National Law University , Gandhinagar .