Workplace harassment

The incidents of sexual harassment will discourage women in all fields from wanting to work and hold a career.

A recent case of sexual harassment at the workplace from Peshawar shines the spotlight, once again, on the issue of the lack of female safety and rights at the workplace. That a nurse was first sexually harassed and then verbally abused by the ward orderly — a male — is a pattern none too unfamiliar.

The truth is that we have always lived in a male-dominated Pakistan. Women are encouraged to stay at home and tend to household duties and this is supplanted by the fact that at any given time, there are usually more males than females on the street going to and returning from workplaces. Eight similar harassment cases against nurses have cropped up in the past three months because the Protection against Harassment of Women at the Workplace Act of 2010 lacks implementation. Nurses complete patient care tasks that sometimes doctors are too busy, proud or untrained to do and hence we need them in our hospitals. The incidents, however, will discourage women in all fields from wanting to work and hold a career. Since a working woman is still not the norm and is a big deal to a family, this will further damage women’s morale to take part in our economy and be empowered.

A proper set-up to handle harassment cases at workplaces would not be to have a sexual harassment committee in every department; this current set-up is inefficient and a wasteful use of resources. One committee should exist through human resources departments to deal with such cases and stop men from taking advantage of the fact that many women in our society are taught to act inferior to men and are often questioned by men on their words, behaviours and actions. All of this points to a society which views man as the superior creation. This ideology gives men in our society the ghastly belief that they can treat women poorly without consequences or accountability, such as the ward orderly in this case. Of course, the accountability issue arises because laws in Pakistan are not enforced, nor are they for everyone to follow.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 10^th, 2014.

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