Why women still don’t speak up about workplace harassment

Despite years of conversations around workplace safety and the implementation of the POSH (Prevention of Sexual Harassment) Act, many employees, especially women, continue to hesitate before reporting harassment. It is easy to attribute silence to fear of retaliation or lack of trust in systems. Both are real but they are only part of the story.

Pallavi Jha, Chairperson & Managing Director of Dale Carnegie India and an advocate for workplace safety and gender inclusion, pointed to deeper, more internalised barriers. “Emotions like shame and embarrassment continue to play a powerful role, along with the quiet fear of being judged. There is also a fear of bias, especially for women who worry they will be labelled as difficult or that it may hurt their growth,” she explained.

Jha also highlights a more subtle conflict, identity. “Many women have built careers on being strong and unshaken. Reporting can feel like it disrupts that self-image,” she noted. She also pointed to a “mental rehearsal of pain,” where employees anticipated questioning, judgment, and isolation, and withdrew before initiating a complaint.

Also, not all harassment is clear-cut. When in doubt, people choose silence over the risk of being dismissed.

A collective silence, not an individual one

Viji Hari, CEO of CecureUs and a leading voice on workplace sexual harassment, diversity, and inclusion, with extensive experience advising organisations on POSH implementation said, “The silence around workplace harassment is layered and complex. In some cases, women even stayed silent because they did not want the perpetrator to lose his job."

But the silence does not end with the individual. “It is a collective silence,” Hari emphasised. Colleagues who are aware often choose not to intervene, while the power and position of the accused discourage action. Organisational gaps, including low trust and limited visibility of POSH committees, further deepen hesitation.

Victims are still blamed and shamed, she pointed out. In such an environment, fear of retaliation and lack of trust in systems reinforced each other, making silence the default response.

When policy exists but protection doesn’t

Most POSH policies in Indian organisations are drafted as legal compliance instruments, not as employee protection mechanisms. Jha distinguishes between compliance-driven policies that protect organisations and those that prioritise employee safety.

According to her, most systems are reactive by design. “There is no proactive redressal architecture. Policies wait for formal complaints that most employees will never file,” she explained. Even when complaints are raised, the process itself can be discouraging. “Internal Committee proceedings often mimic legal cross-examination, placing the burden of evidence on the complainant,” she said.

Organisational culture is not neutral soil in which policy grows. “In many workplaces, informal norms, like labelling complainants as ‘difficult’ or normalising behaviour in high-pressure environments—undermine formal frameworks. Policy may exist on paper, but culture operates in practice, and remains the biggest barrier,” Jha noted.

The power of past cases and invisible networks

Employees rarely assess incidents in isolation, they observe patterns. Hari pointed out that while POSH cases are meant to be confidential, the way they are handled rarely stays invisible within organisations. “Employees do talk to each other about how a case was dealt with. How quickly and fairly action is taken becomes a big factor in whether others will speak up,” she said.

In her own work, Hari has seen multiple instances where silence becomes the norm across entire teams. “In at least 15 cases I have handled in recent years, several people in a department suffered in silence for years because they were scared of retaliation,” she shared. Often, the issue traces back to the power held by a single senior individual. “Everyone is left wondering who will be the first to speak up,” she added.

The absence of collective resistance often signals that people believe those in power can get away with it.

Hari emphasised that breaking this cycle required structural intervention. Rotating team members or shifting managers across projects can help dilute concentrated power and reduce the risk of prolonged silence. “It ensures that no one person has too much control,” she explained.

Jha noted employees don’t just assess the person involved, they assess the network around that person. Whether the accused holds influence, whether colleagues will offer support, and whether speaking up will impact appraisals all influence the decision. “Past cases become the real policy employees believe in,” she added. Who was promoted despite complaints, who was quietly moved out, or who was labelled 'difficult' shaped perception far more than formal guidelines.

What needs to change

The single most important change is creating a complaints infrastructure that is independent of HR, says Jha. She explained that HR’s dual role, employee welfare and organisational risk management, created an inherent conflict, especially when senior employees are involved.

Independent structures with clear authority and board-level visibility remained rare but essential. “Climate Auditing must also be a board-level metric. While revenue and attrition are usually measures, harassment climate is not converted to quantifiable or trackable metric. What gets measured gets managed,” she added.

Organisations, she said, will also benefit from early intervention pathways, informal conversations, mediation, and ‘signal’ mechanisms that create a record without triggering formal proceedings, recognising that most victims simply want the behaviour to stop,” she said.