SEXUAL HARASSMENT OF WOMEN AT WORKPLACE (PREVENTION, PROHIBITION AND REDRESSAL) ACT OF 2013

About:

• The Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act was passed in 2013.
  
  
• It defined sexual harassment, lay down the procedures for a complaint and inquiry, and the action to be taken. It broadened the Vishaka guidelines, laid down by the Supreme Court in a judgment in 1997.
  
  
• The 2013 Act mandated that every employer must constitute an Internal Complaints Committee (ICC) at each office or branch with 10 or more employees.
  
  
• It lay down procedures and defined various aspects of sexual harassment, including the aggrieved victim, who could be a woman “of any age whether employed or not”, who “alleges to have been subjected to any act of sexual harassment”.
  
  
• This meant that the rights of all women working or visiting any workplace, in any capacity, were protected under the Act.