Has #MeToo Backfired in India?
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 24 April 2018
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
India's women workers have joined the global #MeToo movement, but there are signs it may be backfiring, with some company bosses afraid to hire women, for fear of sexual harassment claims. And that could be one of the reasons why the number of women participating in the workforce in India has fallen from 36% to 24% over the last ten years. Rahul Tandon reports from Kalkota. Deepa Narayan, author of Chup - the Hindi word for quiet - shares insights gained by her team, after speaking to 600 women about their experiences of sexism at work and in wider Indian society. Professor Heather McGregor from Edinburgh Business School talks about office life since #MeToo and says, at the very least, people are more aware of what kind of behaviour is unacceptable and are more confident in reporting incidents of harassment.
(Picture: Women sit during a protest highlighting sexual crime in India. Credit: Money Sharma/Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, welcome to Business Daily from the BBC. I'm Manuela Saragossa. Coming up, the Indian companies |
| 0:11.2 | not hiring women because they fear sexual harassment claims. We don't engage any girls. Once an |
| 0:19.0 | allegation is made, if this kind of a hassle and police would drop in |
| 0:23.1 | every second day, carry out inquiries, it doesn't help really. Could that explain the decline |
| 0:28.7 | in the number of India's working women, plus office life after the global Me Too movement? |
| 0:34.7 | Although we still hear distressing stories of abuse from many parts of the world, |
| 0:39.2 | I do think that both men and women have a much greater awareness of what is acceptable behaviour, |
| 0:45.0 | both in the workplace and out-itbid. That's all here in Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 0:53.4 | In many countries around the world, the Me Too movement and the push for equality has led |
| 0:59.2 | hundreds of companies, including the BBC, to reform their pay and employment policies in an |
| 1:04.5 | attempt to level the playing field between men and women. But in India, your gender may actually |
| 1:10.3 | stop you from getting a job altogether. |
| 1:13.1 | Some companies there are choosing not to hire any women. Could that go some way to explain why |
| 1:18.5 | female participation in the workforce in India has been declining in recent years? Only 24% of |
| 1:24.8 | women are working in the formal economy there, well below the global average of 47% according to UN women. |
| 1:32.4 | Raul Tandon has this report from Kolkata. |
| 1:35.6 | We won justice. |
| 1:37.8 | We won justice. |
| 1:39.8 | I'm at a protest in central Kolkata. |
| 1:42.5 | There are about 200 women here. |
| 1:45.4 | They're demonstrating against sexual violence and sexual harassment |
| 1:49.0 | that they say is all too common across this country. |
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