Narratives from the Margin: Sexual Harassment and Strategies of Resistance

Abstract

In India, the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act 2013 completed its ten years in April 2023. However, this is a crucial time to review its effects, provisions, and the awareness about the Act, and how much it has percolated at the grassroots level. Consequently, we must pay attention to the voices from the margin in order to comprehend the situation and need to bring these voices to the center to point out the lacuna and challenges of the Act as well as strengthen the discourse around the sexual harassment of women at the workplace. The study based on empirical findings, focuses on experiences of women workers at a wholesale vegetable market in Pune1 and follows an ethnographic approach. The article argues that mainstream discourse on sexual harassment does not acknowledge experiences of women from the bottom of the socio-economic margins and it is a caste-blind gender discourse. Caste shapes women’s experiences of sexual harassment at workplace differently and sometimes to mitigate the risk, women apply different strategies and build alternative mechanisms to combat sexual harassment at the workplace.