Introduction

Laws intended to address the sexual harassment that millions of women experience every day in the course of their work have taken two broad, mutually non-exclusive approaches in India. One approach is to treat sexual harassment as a crime, to be dealt with through the retributive powers of the criminal justice system. Another approach is to view sexual harassment as a violation of women's constitutional rights to equality, dignity and the freedom to carry out their profession or employment free from discrimination. This second approach has often taken the form of anti-discrimination laws and laws designed to provide women with redressal mechanisms through their place of employment.

In India, both these approaches to combat workplace sexual harassment were formalised into legislative enactments at around the same time. In April 2013, the Indian parliament passed a law to address sexual harassment faced by women in the workplace, the first successful legislative initiative on the subject. Around the same time, the parliament also introduced sexual harassment as a criminal offence under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) through the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 2013. This amendment to the IPC came into force retrospectively from February 2013. In this chapter, we use the framework of legal pluralism to examine how the law relating to workplace sexual harassment has played out in the seven years that have passed since these legislative interventions came into force.

Laws, of course, do not operate in isolation and are not the only tools that women have used in their battle for gender equality and in making the workplace free from discrimination. The #metoo movement has had a powerful impact in India and is the most recent example of women using avenues outside the formal legal system, such as social media, to make their voices heard. Even prior to #metoo, there have been efforts by women, the state and various institutions to make use of all available avenues to voice their concerns on gender equality in the workplace. While we do not examine these other avenues in detail, they provide the context and backdrop in which we analyse the evolution of workplace sexual harassment law in India and how women have used these laws, along with other tools, in bargaining for and advancing their right to equality.