Startups, stop blaming sexual harassment on ‘Indian culture’

Photo credit: pwjamro.

We can all admit that India has a bad reputation for sexual harassment. Global newspapers have called Delhi the “rape capital of the world” and most tourists ask one thing before coming to the country: is it safe for women? Whether they’re CEOs, political figureheads, or police officers, many male figures of authority come with long rapsheets of sexism.

Maybe that’s one of the reasons that India’s startups promise so much hope. They’re youthful and don’t subscribe to the stale hierarchies of old companies. They’re so open that they leave room for innovation, self-discovery, and second chances.

Some are even attracting venture capitalists from across the world – and even better, employees. That means that cities like Bangalore, Mumbai, and Delhi are suddenly home to people from countries that are nowhere near India.

I didn’t feel like they’d vote for me against the CTO.

The flipside of having extremely high hopes, of course, is how low letdowns can be. This past weekend, I met with a woman who had moved from New York to India to help a local startup with its operations in the United States. The company is well-funded with young founders from the IITs – India’s elite universities. I’d visited their colorful, hip office before and had even attended one of their events – these would seemingly have all of the makings of a progressive work environment.

A few minutes into our conversation, she admitted to me that she’d resigned from her job. She had been feeling targeted and sexually harassed by the CTO, she explained. She was still on the fence about whether she wanted to file a legal complaint and requested me not to name the startup.

Every time she raised the issue to HR, or higher management, or the CTO himself, she felt dismissed. At one point, the CTO went so far as to explain that his behavior was a “cultural misunderstanding” – that, in Indian culture, they used “different words” and that he meant things in a “nice way.”

The differences in culture, they all insinuated, were something that she could not possibly understand.

Legal action

Conversations about implementing laws against sexual harassment in the workplace were initiated in 1997, when a few people brought the case of Bhanwari Devi to court. In 1992, Bhanwari was working as a social worker when she found out that a child was being forced into marriage. When she tried to stop it, she was gang raped. In response, activists and NGO leaders decided to come together to start a petition for women’s rights in the workplace. They called themselves Vishaka.

In 2013, the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace Act was passed. Today, all companies that have more than ten people need to comply with it and create what is known as a “Vishaka panel.”

“Each panel needs to have an odd number of people, like 5 or 7,” Pavithra Srinath explains. Pavithra is an advocate who helps companies comply with the act. “That helps settle confusion. One person needs to be an external member – someone who has worked at a women’s NGO, or an advocate – and the others are from within the company.”

Companies that haven’t complied with the act can get a penalty – around INR50,000 (US$745).

I brought up the Vishaka panel to the woman mentioned before to see if that was an option, but she was well aware of its existence. “At one point, HR asked me if I’d like to go through with it, but I didn’t,” she explained to me. “That’s because the number of people that were from the company on the panel was overwhelming, and I didn’t feel like they’d vote for me against the CTO. I didn’t want to open up about what I’d gone through and have them reject me.”

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