The Hindu : New Delhi News : Towards gender sensitive governance

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Sep 15, 2004

New Delhi

New Delhi

Towards gender sensitive governance

By Our Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI, SEPT. 14. To give a fillip to its drive against sexual harassment at the work place, Delhi Government has decided to revamp its existing committees and provide training to officials dealing with such cases along with the other staff of its key departments. As part of this initiative, the Gender Training Institute (GTI), a training wing of the Centre for Social Research, has already begun training the staff of eight major departments of Delhi Government on gender sensitisation and gender at the work place with a special focus on sexual harassment through a series of workshops which began in August this year and which will go on till December next year.

Under the agreement signed recently between the Centre for Social Research, a leading women's organisation working in the field of social action, and the Delhi Commission for Women, the staff of the Delhi Development Authority; Department of Labour; Office of the Joint Commissioner of Police; Crime (Women) Cell; Directorate of Education; Directorate of Family Welfare; Delhi Transport Corporation and New Delhi Municipal Council are being trained.

All eight departments have been asked to depute their officials for a two to three day workshop. About 30 participants (both male and female) are being trained in each workshop. Depending on the need, two to three workshops would be organised for each department's staff. The Delhi Commission for Women has emphasised the importance of the concerned departments to ensure that members of the Departmental Complaints Committee for Sexual Harassment as well as senior officers who deal with sexual harassment complaints attend the workshops.

"There is a need to improvise upon the routine manner of handling complaints related to sexual harassment as of now. And workshops like these can go a long way to achieve that goal,'' says P.M. Singh, Member-Secretary, Delhi Commission for Women. The training sessions are being followed by filling up of evaluation-forms by the participants. These evaluation forms provide an appraisal by the participants of the workshops conducted as well as lucrative suggestions and feedback on improving the handling of cases on sexual harassment by senior officers. It also gives suggestions on improving the complaints committees on sexual harassment in the concerned government departments. The feedback gained is, in turn, used as an advocacy tool to influence policy-formation on sexual harassment in government departments.

"Earlier women employees were not forthcoming in terms of expressing their problems. But now after undergoing the training, I feel they are more comfortable communicating about such things. We are also calling a meeting of all women supervisory staff to generate further awareness,'' says Swatantra Kumari Dua, the Chairperson of the Sexual Harassment Committee of Delhi Transport Corporation.

Interestingly, it has been found that it is only the Class IV employees who are coming forward and registering complaints in case of any incidence of sexual harassment, while the other employees prefer to quit the job or remain silent.

"There is a need to break the culture of silence and women must come forward and register their complaints against sexual harassment. Through our workshops we are sensitising the participants, but a lot depends on the staff (both male and female) of these departments to take the initiative forward and ensure that such committees are operational and efficient,'' says Ranjana Kumari, Director, CSR.

The GTI under the auspices of the CSR has been playing an important role in bringing about an attitudinal change among various sections of society. Since its inception in 1997, the GTIs have conducted more than250 training programmes and reached out to nearly 8000 participants across the country.

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