Amandeep Kaur and Dr. Parmjot Singh, International Journal of Research in Engineering, IT and Social Sciences, ISSN 2250-0588, Impact Factor: 6.565, Volume 09 Issue 01, January 2019, Page 93-97 http://indusedu.org Page 93 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License Extent of Sexual Harassment at Workplace: A Study of Banks and Insurance Companies in India Amandeep Kaur 1 and Dr. Parmjot Singh 2 1 (Senior Research Scholar, Deptt. of Commerce, Punjabi University, Patiala, Punjab, India) 2 (Assistant Professor, Deptt. of Management Studies, MERI College, Janakpuri, New Delhi, India) Abstract: The time has gone when women were fought for equal opportunities in employment. Now a days woman are working equivalent to male colleagues and sharing equal responsibilities. In this global and modern era, women are becoming victim of sexual harassment and sexual assault at their workplaces. GOI (Government of India) had issued proper regulation in the Act during 2013 for prevention, prohibition and redressal of women sexual harassment at the workplace. It is mandatory for companies to formulate sexual harassment policy, set up internal complaint committee and report the sexual harassment cases in the annual reports of companies and take necessary actions. The paper examined the adherence level of women sexual harassment regulation by 42 banks and 49 insurance companies from 2013 to 2018. It further probes the number of cases filed, solved and pending in last five years in both the sectors. The study found that number of banks and insurance companies have been increasing since 2013 that are formulating and implementing sexual harassment policy over the period. Reporting on sexual harassment cases is also increasing every year simultaneously, the cases solving ratio is also rising. There is need to focus more on prevention of sexual harassment with full security on work place. Keywords: Sexual Harassment, Workplace, Insurance, Banking, Legal Framework. I. INTRODUCTION India is the fastest growing economy and showing accelerated progress in various aspects like in trade, infrastructure, technology, living standard, service sector etc. Despite of these developments, women’ safety and security are always under threat. Every day, the news of molestation with women is breaking out at different places of India. Some recent incidents of heinousness in Kathua (Jammu and Kashmir), in Unnao (Uttar Pradesh), in Surat (Gujrat) have traumatized the soul of all Indians. These brutal incidents indicates that India have poor track record for the safety of women. In today’s era, where women are working equal to men in every field, even then they have to face sexual harassment there too. Sometimes the employers play the game of “this for that” in which, women are asked to engage in unwanted and unethical sexual activities to get job or promotion and colleagues are also mentally torture the women with the sexual statements. Vishakha (NGO) has highlighted and brought under notice this issue in 1997 for the first time in India. The NGO has filed petition with Supreme Court against Rajasthan High court judgment on Rajasthan gang rape case. After hearing this matter, Supreme Court had recognised the absence of proper law on sexual harassment at workplace and issued the guidelines on sexual harassment at workplace known as Vishakha guidelines. After 16 years later, Parliament of India has passed another legislation and replaced the Vishakha guidelines against the women sexual harassment at workplace named as “sexual harassment of women at workplace (prevention, Prohibition and redressal) Act, 2013” which is pertinent in the whole India. This act made it mandatory for all employers to set up internal complaint committee at every branch if having more than ten employees on the workplace. The committee must have minimum 4 members and 50% of them should be women. Sexual harassment can be any unwelcome activities like Physical stroke, Request or insist for sexual favour, making sexually comments, showing pornography and any other verbal, non verbal and physical activity of sexual nature. This act provides such platform to many women through which they can work freely and can protect themselves from unwanted behaviour at workplace. Recently in Bollywood industry, #Me too movement has began with the actress Tanu Shree Dutta who had filed a charge against actor Nana Patekar. In #me too movements many sexually assaulted women in Bollywood industry wrote their story on twitter starting with hash tag as symbol of crying against harassment at workplace. Then, this movement began to intensify sharply as many other Bollywood actresses came forward and alleged on various famous Bollywood men for sexual harassment. It indicates that there is need to make the work environment safer for women at a wider spectrum