By IPS Correspondents
ISLAMABAD, Jan 21 2003 (IPS)

Saima Shah (not her real name) still feels uneasy talking about how humiliated and harassed she felt last summer, when she went for a meeting with a high Pakistani government official to discuss child nutrition.

Rather than discussing the causes of malnutrition and child mortality, the official was more interested in knowing how it feels for a mother to breastfeed her baby. "He was constantly asking about the pleasure a mother gets from the ‘let down reflex’àI exactly knew where his line of questioning was leading," recalled Saima, who works with a non-government group.

Saima said she walked out in disgust, and asked her organisation to take up the matter and at least file a protest with the government.

But the organisation was not ready to take on the official because they often needed his help. Saima resigned in protest.

Hers is a typical case of sexual harassment involving a person whose behaviour was ignored just because of his position of power. Rights-based groups say this hush-hush response helps fuel the incidence of sexual harassment, which causes mental and psychological agony to women working in the formal and informal sectors.

Sexual harassment at workplaces is ”widespread” in the country and thus needs immediate government attention, says Nasrin Azhar, a long-time rights activist who works with ActionAid Pakistan, a part of Alliance Against Sexual Harassment at the Workplace (AASHA).

Saima, however, would not have had much help from the law. Although Pakistan is a signatory to U.N. instruments on women’s rights, the government has been dragging its feet on defining what constitutes sexual harassment, let alone introducing legislation to check it.

Existing laws do not declare harassment as a punishable crime. In fact, these are silent on relationships between supervisors and their staff.

Amid this laid-back approach by the government, groups like AASHA have prepared their own code to deal with the issue ? a code of conduct for gender justice at the workplace. It wants the government to adopt the code, which covers the reporting of cases of sexual harassment to reporting to investigation and punishment.

AASHA has gone ahead and is campaigning for the voluntary adoption of this code in the private sector. "Last month, ten organisations adopted the code, proving that it is workable and enforceable," said Hadia Nusrat, an Islamabad-based rights activist and volunteer for AASHA.

According to a study conducted by AASHA, out of 17 nurses between the ages of 16 and 21 interviewed, 58 percent had faced sexual harassment by co-workers, patients or their relatives and doctors. Only 11 percent denied its existence while 29 percent refused to talk about it.

Similarly, 93 percent of female employees of a broad array of private and public sector organisations said in interviews that they faced sexual harassment at work.

The study said that most of the victims were asked out on dates by co-workers and employers, and threatened after their refusal to sexual proposition by their bosses and faced sexually suggestive comments.

But the situation in the informal sector, for example brick kilns, is much worse, where 95 percent of interviewees said they have faced harassment, or even raped and tortured by their employers.

An alliance of more than nine organisations, AASHA says that sexual harassment is often an exercise of male power based on economic position and authority at the workplace. It says that fear of losing jobs and hurting careers prevent victims from reporting incidents of sexual harassment – which can range from physical touch, suggestive language and gestures and subtle actions.

But activists say the situation is often made worse by the fact that victims are blamed for letting on male co-workers and employers if they report such an occurrence.

It is in this context that a spokeswoman for AASHA says that a shift in Pakistan’s legal framework could well help influence attitudes as well.

At present, the legal system is inadequate for awarding punishment to the abuser. "Instead the legal procedures reinforce a woman’s experience of humiliation, embarrassment and public exposure isolating her further," she pointed out.

Discussions about the issue in the government have not been particularly fruitful, although the Ministry of Women’s Development has conceded the need for a legal mechanism to check sexual harassment at the workplace.

The military government of President Gen Pervez Musharraf discussed the adoption of the code of conduct at a cabinet meeting in September last year, but deferred a decision after objections raised by various ministers on what they saw as its too-wide scope of the definition of sexual harassment.

"Many cabinet members felt that the definition was open-ended and could have easily been misusedàthe cabinet asked the ministry to come up with a more realistic and applicable ways to deal with the issue," said an official with the ministry of women’s development.

"It would have also enabled women workers to lodge complaints against their male companions, without having to disclose their identity, hence, creating an atmosphere of distrust at the workplaces,” the same official added.

Sexual harassment is a ”crucial problem that women face at the workplace that needs to be tackled”, and the women’s ministry is working on a draft policy framework that will be presented ”as soon as it is ready," the official said. This is what the government has been saying for years.

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