The new portal offers the facility of making online complaints of sexual harassment at the workplace, to all women in the country including government and private employees.
SHe-Box (Sexual Harassment Electronic Box), the online complaint management system for sexual harassment, which was only available for Central Government employees until now, has been opened for private-sector employees as well.
This was done to ensure the effective implementation of the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act (the SH Act), 2013.
The SHe-Box portal, which was originally launched in July, offers the facility of making online complaints of sexual harassment at the workplace.
Women can access the website, http://shebox.nic.in/, and lodge their complaints. Not just fresh complaints, but women employees who have already filed a written complaint—with the concerned Internal Complaint Committee (ICC) or Local Complaint Committee (LCC) constituted under the SH Act—are also eligible to file their complaints through this portal.
SHe-Box can be an effective platform, because once a complaint is registered on the portal, not only will it be forwarded directly to the concerned employers, but the Ministry of Women and Child Welfare will also monitor the progress of the case. Thus, SHe-Box will ensure speedier justice to women facing sexual harassment at the workplace.
While launching the upgraded portal, Maneka Gandhi, Union Minister for Women and Child Welfare, said that it is probably the first ever time that the government of any country has launched an online portal to receive complaints of sexual harassment at the workplace.
This is a proactive step taken by the Ministry of Women and Child Development (MWCD) in the wake of the worldwide social media campaign #MeToo, where women have related their experiences of facing sexual harassment and abuse.
The complainants also have the option to interact with the MWCD through this portal, with an assured time-bound response.
The portal provides information on 112 institutions empanelled by the MWCD to conduct trainings/workshops on the issue of sexual harassment at the workplace. It offers an option for resource persons and institutions—willing to contribute to training on this subject in various organisations—to submit their applications.
SHe-Box will provide a platform to these empanelled institutes/organisations to share their capacity-building activities with the Ministry, which in turn, will be able to monitor the activities of these institutes/organisations so empanelled from across the country.
The Ministry has published a handbook and training module on the SH Act to provide information about the provisions of the Act in an easy-to-use practical manner. The private organisations are encouraged to customise the training module, as per their extant service rules and disciplinary procedures prescribed therein.