Sexual Harassment: Prevention is the Best Option
Leila Sheikh
Despite the enactment
of the Sexual Offences Special Provisions Act, 1998, Sexual Harassment
continues to be the most perpetrated crime against women. In the
workplace, Sexual Harassment often includes threats, bullying, intimidation and
emotional abuse.
Tanzania has made
strides in enacting SOSPA 1998 but much, much more needs to be done to protect
women, especially in places of employment. For example, the statute of
limitation in SOSPA 1998 places a deterrent on women to report cases of Sexual
Harassment. The clause on time limitation needs amendment so that women would
have the time to prepare emotionally and psychologically to press charges
against the harassment.
We need to have a
separate legislation on Sexual Harassment, which would make it mandatory for
every employer to have a Gender Desk and an Information Kit on Sexual
Harassment. The Information Kit should include the relevant clauses in the
legislation in reader-friendly language, the forms in which Sexual Harassment
takes place, what an employee ought to do when it takes place and the measures
to be taken to safeguard the employee against bullying, threats of losing her
job and the intimidation which always accompanies Sexual Harassment.
Places of employment
in the formal and in the informal sectors should put up posters with
information on Sexual Harassment. India passed legislation in 2013
addressing Sexual Harassment at work place specifically to prevent it from
taking place. This is a milestone in the history of India and needs to be
replicated in our country.
The impact of Sexual
Harassment on women’s health and incomes is gross. Women lose their jobs
if they do not give in, or become emotional wrecks if they do succumb.
All stakeholders
should take prevention of Sexual Harassment seriously. Prevention would
help save the livelihoods and the lives of women. It would help in the Response
to prevent new HIV infections. It would increase women’s productivity. It would
give the ownership of dignity and self-esteem back to women. It would be
consonant with the Bill of Rights and the Charters to which Tanzania is a
signatory.
Prevention of Sexual
Harassment would remove the backlog of pending cases in law courts. It would
give women the impetus to strive harder to break the glass ceiling in their
careers. It would give women the opportunities to blossom into strong,
assertive people which is our Right, instead of being wilted flowers, plucked
in the bud of our careers.
A Commission on the
Prevention of Sexual Harassment should be established which would coordinate
the Initiative to ensure all places of employment are safe for women.
This can, and should
be done, otherwise the Human Rights Charters, which we, as a nation signed, are
just a sham.
Such a Commission
would monitor the establishment of Gender Desks in all work places, that
Information is posted in a visible place in reader-friendly language on Sexual
Harassment and what to do when it takes place. Justice demands so!
