My experience with the Complaints Committee at IIT Bombay

In response to the Supreme Court’s directive to set up a Complaints Committee at all work places to make them safe for women employees, IIT Bombay decided to set up a Complaints Committee immediately. The Committee was to be set up as per the guidelines laid down by the Supreme Court. Being an educational institution, the Committee was to have student representatives as well. Being a student representative at the Senate of IIT Bombay at that point of time, I was inducted into the Committee which comprised senior faculty members, representatives from the staff and an eminent member from an NGO.

The news had just been broken when there were protests among the boy students that a ‘policing cell’ is being set up! Talks about the cell being used by women to get back at innocent boys came up in discussions in the Newsgroups. Even the student newsletter carried a cover page article protesting against the formation of such a cell! This, coming from a campus which still has a skewed sex ratio highly favouring the males, was ridiculous to say the least! We tried to reason with the harried boys, wherever possible, and tried to tell explain that even the girls who have been harassed rarely complained, sexual harassment being a matter of personal shame to several girls, so chances of girls who have not been harassed using the cell to ‘get back’ were remote. And even if anybody tried to abuse the Cell, we wouldn’t allow it. But the protests continued. After a while I remember just hiding behind the Judgement and telling whoever came up to me to protest that the Institute is bound to set up the Cell and that there is no option! The Institute’s support was unequivocal and all the members in the Cell were very committed so we just brazened our way through it all and set up the Cell in October 2002.

Some boys were of the view that women were a privileged lot on campus (being so few in number) and therefore, who would want to harass any of them! But in my one year tenure with the Committee we did come across cases of sexual harassment and even history of them. The commonest cases pertained to women doctoral students who were asked sexual favours by their male supervisors. I came across a few cases during my tenure. Some of my observations in handling these cases are as follows:

1. Girls are very reluctant to put their complaint in writing. I found this again and again as often I used to be the first interface between the girl students and the Committee. They opened up to me and gave me details of their experience but when I requested that they give their complaint in writing they backed off fearing recrimination or further victimisation. As a Committee we were firm that girls have to make a formal complaint for several reasons: (a) To ensure that nobody is unfairly accused (b) To encourage girls to come out in the open (at least to the Committee) as these battles cannot be fought by them anonymously (c) To try and remove the stigma attached to being a victim of sexual harassment.

Cases often couldn’t even be brought to the Committee because the girls refused to formally complain to the Committee.

2. Girls can and do succumb under the mistaken notion of having no choice. ‘I had no choice because I had to get my degree’, was a line that I heard from girls. This, I later realised, was common to several victims of sexual harassment in general. Often women compromise to get their degrees or retain their jobs, etc. Women need to be sensitised to the fact that they have the choice to say no and they must. The consequences of losing out on a degree or a job (which may not necessarily happen) are strategic and far easier to deal with than the trauma of a forced sexual relationship. I remember having asked one girl who said that she had no choice but to give in to her guide’s advances if she would continue giving in to advances of any/all male superiors/bosses all her life. She saw the point I assume but did not come forward to complain openly.

3. The Women’s Cell at IIT Bombay was set up to take cognisance of cases pertaining to cases of gender discrimination as well. Sometimes, any case of discrimination that a woman faced was assumed to be a case of gender discrimination. In such circumstances it was vital to explain that certain cases of discrimination could be because of factors such as work place rules/norms, process of selection, work ethics, etc. and not because of gender. If men and women both complained of a similar discrimination then it does not become an issue of gender discrimination. This point had to be explained gently and carefully.

One of the things that we did at the Cell was to create awareness about issues of gender discrimination and sexual harassment among the employees and students and to this end we used fliers/posters to spread information. We also held workshops and lectures/seminars to which everybody was invited. We also made it a point to celebrate International Women’s Day in a big way to attract attention and engage everybody in women’s issues. When I reflect on it I think that the greatest achievement of the Cell in its first year was the fact that the protests against it completely subsided with time!

Tanushree Mazumdar