Step towards working women safety: SHe Box, online complain system for sexual harassment at workplace

Hospitality sector consists of 60% of women as there working force. Thus, it is essential for the women to know about the initiative taken by the Ministry of Women and Child Development towards stopping sexual harassment at workplace.

Recently, Govt. has launched SHe – Box is an online complaint Management System for women working in both public and private organizations to lodge complaints of sexual harassment at all workplace. This proactive step of launching SHe – Box after observing the experience faced by women related sexual harassment and abuse at the time of worldwide social media campaign #MeToo.

Ministry states that “Ensuring the dignity and safety of women must be first priority for any digital society. Towards realisation of the vision of the Digital India programme, the Ministry is promoting utilisation of information and communication technology to achieve the goal of gender equality and women empowerment. It is an effort to utilise the digital space to enable speedier response to the complaints of women against sexual harassment at workplace”.

This initiative can help women facing sexual harassment at workplace to get comparatively speedier remedy. Once the complaint is submitted to the portal, it would be directly sent to the Internal Complaint Committee (ICC)/  Local Complaint Committee (LCC) of the concerned employer. Through this portal, WCD, as well as complainant, can monitor the progress of inquiry conducted by the ICC/LCC. Those who have already filed a written complaint with the concerned Internal Complaint Committee (ICC) or Local Complaint Committee (LCC) constituted under the SH Act are also eligible to file their complaint through this portal.

Govt. further mentions that users can interact with the Ministry of Women and Child Development via this portal with an assured time bound response. Moreover, the portal also provides information on 112 institutions empanelled by MWCD to conduct training/workshops on the issue of sexual harassment at the workplace.