Sharing of a Feminist Activist

(Vandana works with ActionAid Association, as part of the team leading the organisation’s engagements in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. The views expressed here are personal and do not necessarily reflect those of the ActionAid Association.)

The email I received in December 2024 was a major milestone in a journey started almost a decade ago. As a member of the ActionAid Association team leading the organisation’s engagements across Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, and based in the city of Hyderabad, I was appointed as an external member of the Local Complaints Committee (LCC), Hyderabad district, Telangana.

For the team this was recognition of years of unwavering advocacy, research, and grassroots efforts to strengthen women’s protection against workplace sexual harassment. The journey had begun long before the letter arrived. Back in 2015, ActionAid Association had undertaken a groundbreaking research study with 50 young women home-based workers in Hyderabad revealing a disturbing truth—workplace sexual harassment wasn’t limited to office spaces. It seeped into homes where women laboured in industries like bangle-making, safety pin production, and incense-stick crafting, often facing harassment from middlemen who controlled their employment. These men—who dictated wages and work availability—had unchecked power, which many abused, subjecting women to unwanted advances and outright sexual exploitation under the guise of business transactions.

This revelation marked the beginning of a long fight for justice. Expanding upon this initial study, ActionAid Association conducted extensive surveys on Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013 (POSH Act) awareness among women in both organized and unorganized sectors. The findings were stark—many women didn’t even know their rights, let alone the mechanisms to report abuse. Their fears were justified: job loss, social stigma, and financial insecurity deterred them from speaking out.

Sexual harassment at the workplace is more than a legal issue; it is a fundamental attack on dignity and equality. I remember reading about Bhanwari Devi, a social worker in Rajasthan, who was brutally assaulted in 1992 while trying to prevent an infant marriage. Her courage, though met with unspeakable injustice, set into motion a movement that reshaped laws and policies in India. The Vishaka Guidelines, introduced in 1997, provided the first formal structure to address workplace harassment, and later, the POSH Act of 2013 took it further—extending protections to women in the informal sector.

Despite these advancements, I couldn’t help but ask: How many women truly feel safe at their workplaces? How many understand their rights or the redressal mechanisms available to them? These questions became the foundation of my work with ActionAid Association. With each passing year, we pushed for more accountability—ensuring that LCCs were established and institutionalized, complaint mechanisms were accessible, and legal protections were extended to all working women, regardless of the nature of their employment.

On the ground, our efforts were multi-faceted. I remember the first safety mapping walk vividly. Walking through the streets with my fellow activists, we marked unsafe zones—poorly lit alleys, broken CCTV cameras, deserted bus stops. Each red marker on our map represented an area where women felt vulnerable. It was more than data; it was the lived reality of countless voices demanding change. “If I go alone, no one will hear me. But if we go together, we are heard,” Seema, a member of the Young Women’s Collective, had said. Her words fuelled our mission.

Through advocacy efforts, we filed RTIs, pushed petitions, and engaged with law enforcement. The Safety and Security for Her Everywhere (SHE) Teams set up by the Telangana Police Women Safety Wing, met us in local bastis, educating schoolgirls on their rights while we advocated for female officers in patrol units. We stepped into CCTV control rooms, analysing footage, seeing firsthand the gaps in surveillance that needed urgent action. The energy of the “Safe Cities for Women” campaign was electrifying. I remember the chill of the early morning as we gathered for the Cycle Rally at Charminar. Over 500 women, from survivors to students, rode through the streets, asserting their place in public spaces. The “Run with Her” marathon was another moment of resilience—each step echoing a demand for safety, equality, and accountability. As part of our broader advocacy agenda, ActionAid Association made formal representations to the Department of Women and Child Development in Telangana. We underscored a crucial gap: while the state helpline for women was a lifeline for many, it was not equipped to handle workplace sexual harassment complaints under the POSH Act. We urged the department to integrate the women’s helpline with the LCC complaint mechanism, ensuring that survivors reporting harassment—regardless of their location or employment type—would be guided to the appropriate redressal body. This proposal wasn’t merely administrative; it was about ensuring no call for help fell through the cracks.

We also reached out to employers, urging them to establish Internal Committees (ICs), conduct workplace sensitization sessions, and comply with the POSH Act’s mandate to display awareness materials.

We weren’t just advocating; we were building capacities. The workshops on Sexual Harassment, Feminism, and Patriarchy transformed the way many of us understood gender biases. At colleges, vocational institutes, even medical schools, students were trained on the POSH Act—their growing confidence was palpable. I still remember the fierce discussions where women voiced their experiences, learning how to challenge harassment and demand institutional protections.

In 2024, as part of the Local Complaints Committee (LCC), ActionAid Association, through my membership in it, finally found itself in a position to transform years of rigorous research into tangible action. The journey had evolved—moving beyond awareness-building to ensuring that women had real, accessible mechanisms to protect themselves, seek redressal, and reclaim agency over their workplaces, whether that space was a government office, a factory floor, a street vendor’s stall, or their own home. Becoming an LCC member was both a profound honour and a weighty responsibility. I was no longer working from the periphery—I now had a seat at the table where justice was being shaped. My task was to bring the lived realities of women, particularly from informal and marginalized sectors, into the formal redressal architecture.

Our first priority as a committee was to review and refine the standard operating procedures to ensure they were trauma-informed, survivor-centric, and aligned with the spirit and letter of the POSH Act. Many complainants we worked with had never approached any institutional justice mechanism before, and for them, even navigating the process felt overwhelming. We focused on simplifying communication, demystifying procedures, and reassuring confidentiality and dignity throughout.

Over the months, we received cases spanning a broad and often invisible spectrum of workplaces—from small manufacturing units and semi-formal service setups to state departments and women-led cooperatives. Several complaints involved repeat harassment, threats of job loss, and behaviour normalised under the pretext of “work culture”. Each case demanded a balance between empathy and firmness.

I contributed to drafting assessments, organizing inquiry meetings, and sensitizing the committee on critical contextual factors like caste hierarchies, migrant vulnerabilities, and the erosion of boundaries between workspace and domestic space. Our inquiries were collaborative but firm, guided by a commitment to fairness and rooted in the understanding that redressal must go hand-in-hand with systemic reform. Every decision prioritized the complainant’s safety and dignity, and every finding was documented with transparency and care.

Among the many cases we handled, a few remain etched in my memory. One involved a woman in a public sector enterprise after she exposed falsified management reports. In retaliation, false allegations of an illicit relationship with a colleague were circulated to shame and silence her. Later she was abruptly terminated. Another case surfaced during an informal outdoor team meet, where a woman was subjected to inappropriate touching and comments. Unaware of the Internal Committee’s presence, she approached the Human Resource Department—only to be transferred without action being taken against the perpetrators. In yet another community session designed for home-based workers, a woman bravely shared years of abuse and harassment by a middleman who controlled her work assignments. Until that session, she hadn’t realized that her home-based work qualified as a workplace under POSH. Her courage and trust in the process led to swift action by the LCC—an unforgettable reminder of how awareness can be the first step toward justice.

These cases are emblematic of a deeper truth: that power, especially when left unchecked, can become an instrument of fear and coercion. In both the organized and unorganized sectors, women remain vulnerable—not just to harassment, but to institutional indifference and structural silencing. The absence of a clearly constituted and functioning Internal Committee (IC), combined with poor awareness of POSH guidelines, leaves perpetrators unchallenged and survivors unsupported. Failing to establish Internal Committees, as mandated under Section 4 of the POSH Act, is not just a procedural lapse—it’s a legal and moral failure. It renders a critical law into an ornamental document, disconnected from the people it is meant to protect.

Reflecting on the journey from our early studies in 2015 to the deeply human stories shared in LCC hearings a decade later, I am reminded that advocacy, policy, and people must converge for real change to happen. Laws alone don’t create safe workplaces—people do. And through the LCC, I’ve seen how determined individuals, collective listening, and survivor-centred systems can breathe life into the promises made on paper.