What if a woman is a senior government officer and has been slapped on her bottom (from the back) by her Super Senior level officer or If a woman is gang-raped by enraged men just because of her efforts to prevent child marriage in her family. Such situations have been faced by Rupan Deol Bajaj in 1988 and Bhanwari Devi in 1992 in India.
In 2016 in a garment factory in south India, 11 female workers who came to the city to earn money and sustain their families said that their employer always used abusive words on them during work, like saying 'Do you come here to pluck your pubic hairs'.
Much of such sexual harassment at the workplace go unnoticed just because many female workers are working in India to earn a livelihood for their needy families and many of them engulf the harassment by their employers so that at home this woman needs to feed her children.
Is it her fault if she is poor?
Till when and with whom she needs to fight daily?
Self-respect, dignity, a conducive and enabling work environment, is this too much that we can't provide her?
#empoweringwomen #life #workingwoman #metoo #girlpower #mother

~case studies and examples are taken from an Article by Urvashi Butalia(Director, Zubaan Publishers)
© Sandeep Bhagwat