Harassment at the Workplace, Powerlessness and Identity: Experiences of Women Civil Servants in India

Abstract

Women civil servants have to put up an incessant fight to assert and defend their ‘identity’ in Indian workplaces. The article discusses the perception of women civil servants based on semi-structured interviews that were audio-taped and transcribed. The discussion is situated within Indian culture that elevates woman’s status to that of a deity (Basham, 1954) but practises rampant discrimination through dowry harassment, violence within the family and harassment at workplaces. The role of women civil servants produces sharp tensions between perception and reality; as civil servants, the women attempt to reconcile men’s perceptions of women with their true identity and capabilities. The purpose of the study is to examine how this affects women’s life and work. The methodology adopted is the case study with narrative inquiry supplemented by the Listening Guide (Gilligan et al., 2003) and voice poems (Gilligan, 1993) to comprehend the views of the respondents. The analysis and findings highlight the cognitive, emotional and behavioural defences used by women civil servants. They attempt to reconcile their experience of powerlessness at the workplace with the sense of power that accrues to their socially ascribed position.