Creating Safe and Inclusive Workplaces: Understanding POSH Act

Most Indian workplaces like to say they are “equal opportunity employers.” The reality on the ground is often different. Women are still paid less for the same job, passed over for promotions, and quietly written off as “less committed” the moment marriage or motherhood enters the picture. Add unwelcome comments, inappropriate jokes, or worse, and the workplace stops being a place of growth and becomes a source of daily anxiety. Understanding why this happens, and what the law actually says about it, is the first step toward changing it.

Gender stereotypes and discrimination at work 🔗

Workplaces don’t create gender bias from scratch. They usually just mirror the assumptions society already holds, and then reward or punish people based on them. This shows up in three predictable ways: unequal pay, stalled promotions, and doubts about a woman’s reliability.

The pay and promotion gap 🔗

India’s gender wage gap has narrowed over the decades but hasn’t closed. One long-term analysis of national labour data found the gap fell from roughly 38 percent in the mid-1990s to about 24 percent by 2025, yet occupational segregation still explains a large share of the difference, with women concentrated in lower-paying sectors like retail and hospitality. Meanwhile, women’s labour force participation itself remains a puzzle. Female workforce participation actually declined for decades before a recent uptick, and a large part of the improvement has come from women moving into unpaid or self-employed farm work rather than salaried jobs, which does little to close the earnings gap in practice, as research from the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations shows. When fewer women are visible in mid and senior roles to begin with, the “there’s no one qualified” excuse for skipping them at promotion time becomes self-fulfilling.

Assumptions about reliability and commitment 🔗

A woman who leaves at 6 pm for childcare is often labelled “less serious” about her career, while a man doing the same is rarely questioned. These assumptions rarely get spoken aloud in a performance review, but they shape who gets stretch assignments, client-facing roles, or a seat in the room where decisions are made. The cost isn’t just personal. Organisations that filter out half their talent pool based on stereotypes end up with narrower thinking and weaker innovation, simply because fewer perspectives are shaping the outcome.

Understanding sexual harassment at the workplace 🔗

Discrimination is one axis of the problem. Sexual harassment is another, and it’s often more damaging because it directly threatens a person’s sense of safety at work. It isn’t limited to physical contact. It includes any unwelcome behaviour of a sexual nature, direct or implied, such as physical advances, demands or requests for sexual favours, sexually coloured remarks, showing pornography, or other unwelcome verbal, non-verbal, or physical conduct, as laid out in the legal definition used under Indian workplace law. This coverage isn’t limited to office premises either. It extends to any place visited during the course of employment, including client sites, official travel, and transport arranged by the employer.

Why recognising it matters 🔗

Harassment doesn’t need to be dramatic to be damaging. A pattern of “harmless” comments or persistent unwanted attention can create what the law calls a hostile work environment, one where a person dreads coming to work, avoids certain colleagues, or starts underperforming simply to stay invisible. Research suggests the scale of the problem in India is significant. A study tracking working women found that nearly 70 percent reported experiencing at least one form of workplace harassment during their careers, and that women were willing to give up close to a fifth of their wages in exchange for a safer workplace. That single statistic captures how much of a “tax” unsafe workplaces impose on women’s careers and earning potential.

The POSH Act, 2013: legal protections for women 🔗

India didn’t always have a standalone law on this. For over a decade, workplaces relied on the Vishaka Guidelines, a set of directions issued by the Supreme Court in 1997 after a public interest case exposed the absence of any legal remedy for workplace harassment, as legal commentary on the Act’s history explains. Parliament finally converted those guidelines into a proper statute: the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013, commonly called the POSH Act.

The Internal Complaints Committee 🔗

The Act’s central mechanism is the Internal Complaints Committee, or ICC. Every employer with 10 or more employees must set one up at each office or branch. The committee needs a minimum of four members: a senior woman employee as presiding officer, at least two employees with a background in social work or legal knowledge or a demonstrated commitment to women’s issues, and one external member from an NGO or with relevant expertise, according to the official handbook on the Act. For smaller workplaces, or when the complaint is against the employer, a Local Complaints Committee formed by the district administration steps in instead.

Timelines, protections, and penalties 🔗

The law is fairly specific about process. A woman must file a written complaint within three months of the incident, extendable by another three months for valid reasons. The committee is then required to complete its inquiry within 90 days. Crucially, the Act protects complainants from being penalised simply because they couldn’t fully prove their case, since an unsubstantiated complaint isn’t automatically treated as a malicious one. Employers who fail to set up an ICC or otherwise comply face a monetary penalty, and repeated violations can even affect their business licence.

A digital push: the SHe-Box portal 🔗

To make the redressal process more accessible, the Ministry of Women and Child Development runs the SHe-Box portal, a centralised platform where any woman, in the organised or unorganised sector, can file a complaint and track its status. The portal was relaunched with expanded features to strengthen enforcement, and by early 2026 it had grown to cover over 1.6 lakh registered workplaces and more than 68,000 Internal Committees across the country, following Supreme Court directions asking employers to formally register their committees.

Challenges in implementation and the way forward 🔗

A strong law on paper doesn’t automatically translate into a safe workplace. Two problems keep showing up: underreporting and weak enforcement on the ground.

Fear of retaliation and stigma 🔗

Despite legal protections, roughly one in three women who experience harassment never report it. The reasons are consistent across studies: fear of losing the job, worry about being labelled “difficult,” concern for reputation, and simple distrust that the system will actually protect them. This is compounded when the harasser is a senior colleague, since many women change jobs or quietly leave the workforce altogether rather than risk a formal complaint. Silence, in this context, isn’t consent. It’s a rational response to a system that often punishes the person who speaks up more than the person who caused harm.

Power imbalances and committee independence 🔗

Even when a complaint is filed, the outcome depends heavily on how independent and well-trained the ICC actually is. A committee that lacks proper training, or one where members feel pressure from senior management, can end up moving slowly or being seen as biased, undermining the very trust the law is meant to build. Genuine change requires more than compliance paperwork. Organisations need regular sensitisation training, visible commitment from leadership, and confidential channels that employees actually believe in. Supporting the person who comes forward and holding the perpetrator accountable, consistently and without exception, is what turns a legal requirement into a workplace culture.

What do you think? 🔗

What do you think? Do you think Indian workplaces rely too heavily on legal compliance rather than genuine cultural change when it comes to gender sensitivity? And what would make a colleague more likely to report harassment instead of staying silent?

References

1. https://eprajournals.com/IJES/article/18078
2. https://icrier.org/pdf/the_states_narrative_on_womens_work_in_india.pdf
3. https://scvriti.delhi.gov.in/sites/default/files/inline-files/handbook_on_sexual_harassment_of_women.pdf
4. https://g2lm-lic.iza.org/publications/pb/seventy-percent-the-reality-of-workplace-harassment-in-india/
5. https://www.acumenjuris.com/article-single.php?id=36
6. https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2049765
7. https://ssrana.in/posh-law/articles/mwcd-notification-on-she-box-portal/