Of workplace and sexual abuse of women

Afsan Chowdhury

We are not offering solutions or surprises but only narrating a transition that is taking far too long. Society is scared of changes though it's only in change that our survival lies. We accept so many things including the autocracy of the rich but yet we are unable to deal with the democracy of women. All women want is a secured working environment and there are so few places that can provide it.

THE young lady is happy and yet nervous. She is barely able to restrain her excitement as she works and as she speaks, she chats of her new job to be. She has a probation period. Will she be able to impress her new bosses? Her colleagues tease her about the new job. They are from different backgrounds, of different shapes and sizes and like many colleague-friends accept her on her own term.
She likes the laughter, the banter, the near madness that fuels a newspaper office work. But then such places have their own logic and the price of that environment is a relatively low salary compared to what her new job will get her. It always is. But she has spent days, months in the bon homie of her good companions. She already begins to feel nostalgic about the impending 'past'.
"I will miss you all so much. I felt so good here." Her eyes mist, as she knows that life will never be so 'unofficial' again. The middle-aged journalist who works bare feet because his shoes are wet tries to look at her without moving his chair.

"Did you get the message that George Bush called you." Everyone laughs. It's their own private joke. In newspaper offices middle-aged men never grow up.

"This is a place where I felt safe."

"You will feel safe where you are going too."

"I know. That's why I took this job. But you all are...

"You are about to become respectable Melamine." It's a nickname for the girl who is leaving given by those who are staying back.

*****
BANGLADESHI girls work in a society, which is not ready to accept working women. It's a strange paradox that while families are unable to run on single incomes or as girls shoulder greater responsibility or just look for plain old careers, society can't bring itself to cope with this new phenomenon. Some would say a new threat to malehood. But even if that feminist reading of the work situation is not entirely correct, this isn't a comfortable equation.

And there is always the dark, dark shadow of sexuality in so many cases. As Nachiketa says in his song, almost a national anthem of the problems of the working girl, "khetey khawa meyera to voggyo" (working girls are consumables).

We just don't eat our food or drink a bottle of cola but chew women as snacks when we get the chance.

"They are tit bits", a friend once said as he gulped a glass of water to drown the merry joy of the prospect of having sex as part of his 'social duty' in employing someone.

Is that what is called entitlement of the powerful?

*****
SALMA was almost a classical case of abuse. She got the job when she attended a wedding party of a friend. She had done her graduation and was looking for something to do. The age or the need to work doesn't differ if you are a girl. At 24 you better work because your father can't make it alone. He has retired and your kid brothers are still studying. So, if need be, you dropout and take the first job. She enjoyed her job, which didn't involve serious responsibilities.

"I had to have sexual relationship with my boss because I had come to know by that time what he would do."

"And this went on?"

"This went on."

"So working girls are forced."

"No, they are vulnerable. That's because these employers are not human beings. Their mentality is that of a jotdar. Just like they call their peon haramjada, they think of us as beshyas.

"So how are women going to deal with it?"

Salma exploded in rage. " No, no you got it all, wrong. Why should we deal with it? How are women going to deal with it when you think all women are of loose character?"

Her rage shakes her body and as she breaks into sobs I don't understand where her anger ends and her loathing begins.

*****
I agree that treating working women as easy sex preys is largely our problem but in most cases it's rooted in our own uncertainty in a multi-sexual world. Urban society is a very recent phenomenon and only a handful of women are allowed to work in offices. Our behaviour is that of being unable to determine whether to be professional and lose some of our sexual insecurity as women assert themselves or use our sexuality for professional domination. Either way, it's meant to put down women.

Society has left us adrift without telling whether it's right to sexually repress women or not, something we have traditionally done.

When we spill acid on a woman's face we will also blow the trumpet of our insecurity at a brutal level. When we make a pass at our colleague who can't protest, at the girl who works under us, we do the same without the blazing liquid.

We are screaming that somebody should accept our fragile and inadequate sexual identity.

We aren't man enough to accept women as human beings, as colleagues and certainly not as our equals.

*****
IF the situation is bad at office level it's horrific at the domestic workers level. In that world girls, women etc are really oggyo, consumables. I was told of this case story by members of Breaking the Silence, a group working on sexual abuse.

"This girl was brought in by her family to work as a maid. Soon, her master started to abuse her. In fact, the wife would hold the girl down during the act of abuse. Her excuse was that after an operation she had lost interest in sex so she was helping her husband. Actually, as the girl later told us, she was also being abused by the uncle who would come after the husband went to work. One day, unable to take anymore, the girl fled away. She was found by a colleague from another NGO."

"But when she went to a legal aid NGO, she almost went broke down under questioning. They actually couldn't believe that such things were possible. We had to rescue her and get her into hospital."

" What happened to her later on?"

"Her brother came from the village and returned her to the same house. They paid well and looked after the entire family"

The perversity is not in the act of sexual abuse but our tolerance of the same.

*****
SALMA called me one day and as I wasn't in touch with her for long this was a surprise. She had become pregnant and when she had approached her boss, the inevitable happened. She was shown the door and not allowed in again. Since her relationship was no secret, some of her colleagues sympathised. They collected money and that paid for her abortion, a slightly botched up job. Her wounds took long to heal. Meanwhile, her uncle married her off as a second wife to a man who wanted a wife who could bear him a child.

But without her knowing, something had gone wrong with her abortion. She had become infertile. After a couple of years her husband threw her out.

"Could you help me get my mahr?

I couldn't do much and we dropped contacts again.

*****
WORKING in office has become such a serious problem in certain parts of Africa that it's called the 'sugar-daddy' syndrome. Where ageing men copulate with teenagers who are at the mercy of a shrinking job market.

"People don't understand how international policies reach out and strike someone million miles away. Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAP) have taken away jobs and business and we take whatever we get. Life is not ours anymore."

I saw a gristly poster of a man pawing a child.

But who is responsible for the scene?

*****
A girl tells me that she has been offered a job but the man who has made the offer wants to take her out. She has refused but she knows that it amounts to refusing the job. So a woman is sexually harassed before she takes a job, while doing a job and even after she leaves it.

What should women do?

*****
MELAMINE is sad because the period of her tenure is coming to an end. We tell her that the benefits will outweigh the pain of losing her old friends. We give her all the advice that is useful and a few that are quite useless. When the day of her departure will come she will be despondent but the excitement of her new job will overwhelm everything.

"Keep your spirit up. For your child's sake."

She smiles, now more relaxed.

We are not offering solutions or surprises but only narrating a transition that is taking far too long. Society is scared of changes though it's only in change that our survival lies. We accept so many things including the autocracy of the rich but yet we are unable to deal with the democracy of women.

All women want is a secured working environment and there are so few places that can provide it.

Related Articles:

Harrasment of working women in Bangladesh - Daily Star

Creating Safe Space and New Opportunities for Women Workers - Changemakers Journal

Disclaimer: Drishtipat is not responsible for the opiniion of the columnist

Courtesy of Daily Star.

Photo Credit: Ihtisham Kabir, Changemakers journal