Safety and security of women in the country is of utmost priority for the Government. Keeping this in view, the Government has enacted “the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013” (SH Act) to provide protection to women against sexual harassment at workplace and for the prevention and redressal of complaints related to it. The Act covers all women, irrespective of their age, employment status or nature of work, whether working in public or private, organised or unorganised sector and whether in rural and urban areas. The Act casts a legal obligation upon employers of all workplaces, public or private, to provide a safe and secure working environment free from sexual harassment, whereby every employer is mandated to constitute an Internal Committee (IC) wherever the number of employees/ workers is more than 10. Similarly, the Appropriate Government is authorized to constitute Local Committee (LC) in every district to receive complaints from organizations having less than ten workers or if the complaint is against the employer himself/herself. The Act has enough provisions to deal with various aspects of the matter including penal provisions for those who violate the provisions of the Act including for the employers. Ministry of Women and Child Development (MWCD) being the Nodal Ministry, issues advisories to all Central Ministries /Departments and State Governments/ Union Territory (UT) Administrations from time to time for effective implementation of the Act and to organize workshops and awareness programmes at regular intervals for sensitizing the employers and employees.

As per the provisions of the Act, the appropriate government has been mandated to maintain the data of number of complaints received and disposed of. Till recently, there was no central database for maintaining the data on number of ICs and LCs as well as number of complaints filed and disposed of. Hence, being the Nodal Ministry, the Ministry of Women and Child Development (MWCD) launched SHe-Box recently. The complaint registration feature in the She-Box went live on October 19, 2024, after a majority of Central Ministries and Departments onboarded the portal. Since then, the portal has received 9 complaints. The portal has been designed to serve as a central repository for ICs and LCs at various State/ UT administration level workplaces as well as workplaces in private sector, once they on-board the portal.

The SHe-Box portal has been developed in accordance with the provisions of the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013 and the time prescribed for inquiry under the Act is 90 days.

This information was given by the Minister of State for Women and Child Development Smt. Savitri Thakur in Lok Sabha in reply to a question today.

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