When the boss video calls you at an odd hour, could it be sexual harassment?

Getting unwarranted video call requests at odd hours and comments on social media images by male colleagues who aren't friends are among issues of sexual harassment women working at home through the nationwide lockdown have faced, organisations working against cyber harassment said.

The coronavirus-triggered lockdown has posed a whole lot of challenges for women professionals especially, as they battle to manage the work-life balance. Furthermore, also, they are facing sexual harassment online. 

A lot of women have approached specialists for guidance, unsure of how exactly to raise complaints of sexual harassment in the work-from-home scenario.

“There are no clear guidelines from companies how home based should function in an organisation and that confuses women. I have already been obtaining 4-5 such complaints of harassment everyday since the lockdown was imposed,” said Akancha Srivastava, who runs the building blocks Akancha Against Harassment, an initiative against cyber harassment.

However, the number of complaints received by the National Commission for Women (NCW) has been low because the lockdown commenced but those working in the field say that could be because many women do not want to officially complain but desire to consult what they can do on the problem.

“During the lockdown, a lot of women are worried about their job security so they aren't sure if indeed they should speak up or not. The ladies have a frequent worry that they shouldn't be seen as troublemakers,” Srivastava said.

 “Since we've never experienced absolute work from home before, women are always second-guessing if it had been harassment, where does one draw the line, how does one define the body language as offensive or indecent? Male colleagues stalking them on social media or sending friend requests, commenting on their pictures when they aren't even friends.

“Women are being told to come online at odd hours. They are subtle means of sexually harassing them,” she said.

Giving examples, Srivastava said one woman had recently received a video call request from her boss at 11 pm for an “urgent matter”, however when she received the decision it turned out to be for something that on a normal day could have been easily looked after over an email.

Srivastava said that with work-from-home, there are bound to be some disruptions and that colleagues should respectfully accept them, but that's not happening. That is leading to more stress to women.

For instance, in a sexist comment, an other woman was asked by her boss over video call if she was capable of handling work assigned to her as she seemed “distracted” as a result of her children who were playing in the backdrop.

Some women have also complained that they find their colleagues inappropriately dressed during virtual meetings and it made them uncomfortable.

The Prohibition of Sexual Harassment Act 2013 (or POSH) was enacted to make sure safe working spaces for women and also to build enabling work environments that respect the rights of working women to equality of status and opportunity.

It defined a ‘workplace’ as “anyplace visited by employee arising out of or during employment, including transportation supplied by the employer for undertaking such a journey”. As such, while working at home, the home can be defined as the workplace.

An activist at InfoSec Girls, an organisation educating women on cyber security, said a lot of individuals don’t report but wish to discuss what they should do if they face sexual harassment.

The activist said there were occasions when men either usually do not realise that women colleagues are also on the decision or tend to wilfully ignore it, while passing inappropriate comments.

Also, now that many people are working at home, colleagues have lost sense of propriety about when a female colleague can be contacted. People end calling anytime and begin meetings at odd times. This can make women uncomfortable because they need to balance family life with work, she said.

“When women raise these varieties of concerns, we say, ‘if you are feeling uncomfortable with any discussion or comment, raise the concern immediately on the call so it does not happen again. If which makes them uncomfortable, then discuss it with the leadership or raise it via the organisation reporting channel’,” she said.

Every organisation is supposed to check out the Visakha guidelines on sexual harassment. “You will find a proper council that addresses each one of these concerns. Women can anonymously report the concerns. The council then discusses the concern with person against whom the complaint was raised. If nothing else works out, women can report to local authorities,” she said.