Sexual Harassment: A Growing Concern for Women in Indian Healthcare Industry

Abstract

Centuries of development in the field of medicine, has been one among the many indispensable major factors behind India's sky-high growth and overall prosperity. Medicine has evolved itself from being just a subject of applied sciences at clinical level to become an industry occupied in constantly increasing the life-expectancy of the man kind. The Indian healthcare industry has been making an immense contribution in improving the quality of healthcare and ancillary services to the second largest populous country in the world, which shall continue only if every employee is secured from work-place crimes like sexual harassment. An employee is considered to be a victim of sexual harassment when he or she is mentally or/and physically pressurized against his or her will to get sexually exploited by a co-employee or a superior at his or her work-place. The Indian Penal Code along with several legislations governing the Indian healthcare industry have recognized the seriousness of ‘sexual harassment at work-place’, calling for an immediate attention from both legal and medical fraternity.