Men are victims too... but they dont often report. ...!

Men don’t actually cry less than women, they just do it differently. Since we never saw our fathers and brothers cry, we are forced to devise our own inimitable imagination, any human who has a soul is bound by emotions and shows them up differently under altered circumstances. In this social fabric, the society we live in, friends right from our childhood are generally of the same sex, only after adolescence for when men and women agree, it is only in their conclusions, the eyes of the liberal social order tend to evolve with friendship as pure and divine which only few can understand, more often than not it leads into courtship or ends in a breakup.

There is a lot of research done, published and statistics written on sexual harassment at workplace where women are the victims at least 43% at times and men at least 12% a times who have been pressurized by the opposite sex for sexual favours. One of the most robust sex differences in personality research is the finding that women are higher in agreeableness than men are. The difference is over half a standard deviation, which means that although there is plenty of overlap between the sexes, the average man scores lower than 70% of women, and may be one of the reasons that the reported cases of sexual harassment at workplace go unreported by men, and add to that the social stigma that often a stereotyped man faces in the society.  Sexual harassment is not limited to the boundaries of bosses exploiting their subordinates but extends into Men harassing Women colleagues, Women harassing Men colleagues, Men harassing Men colleagues and Women harassing Women colleagues. Now-a-days there has been increased number of cases reported on same-sex sexual harassment, 12% of men have reported being sexual harassed by men at the workplace and 3% of women have reported being sexually harassed by women at the work place.

One of the impediments is to comprehend the concept of sexual harassment as it involves a range of behaviours, even the victims find it difficult to explain what they experienced., and after a lot of deliberation a definition agreed upon commonly by the international community and is demarcated “Sexual Harassment at workplace is unwelcome sexual favour and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature that tends to create a hostile or offensive work environment”

The Supreme Court of India defined Sexual Harassment as any unwelcome sexually determined behaviour (whether directly or by implication) such as - Physical contact and advances, A demand or request for sexual favours, Sexually colored remarks, Showing pornography, any other unwelcome physical, verbal or non-verbal conduct of sexual nature. The landmark case of Vishaka and others Vs. State of Rajasthan laid down guidelines for the preventing and redressel of the complaints by women who were sexually harassed at workplace. The Guidelines entrusted the Employer with the obligation to provide a safe and woman friendly environment. The sections 354, 509, and 376 of the Indian Penal Code which deal with sexual assault, namely, outraging the modesty of a woman, eve teasing and committing rape of a woman, all assume that men cannot be subjected to these crimes, The only form in which a wrong sexual advancement on a man is recognized as an offence is as sodomy under the 377 section of the IPC. Apart from that there is no law to punish a person for molesting a man. This causes more challenges in cases of male sexual harassment or same-sex sexual harassment.

While the organizations strive and but the best of the policies to ensure safe workplace for women bound by law, the organizations can go ahead and define their own policies related to protect their employees be it men or women, its crucial to create constant awareness among the employees to report such instances. Its been observed that at least 90% of cases don’t get reported in the official channels but are known through the grapevine. The Human resource professionals should engage in creating confidential mechanisms of reporting such acts where voice of the employee reaches the right action taker so that such instances are avoided in the future. There is a lot that needs to be done in this area and for sure right steps have already been taken… it’s important to strengthen them further…