Anti-Sexual Harassment Laws in India

“Dixit offers a riveting and comprehensive analysis of encounters with the policy and law on sexual harassment in the workplace in India. By asking how the “problem” of SHW is produced, she broadens the canvass of understanding and points the way to possible interventions. Her insights into intersecting axes of marginalisation generate an original contribution to the field. I strongly recommend this methodologically innovative and conceptually exciting book.” —Carol Bacchi, Professor Emerita of Politics, The University of Adelaide, Australia “Anukriti Dixit’s WPR analysis of India’s workplace sexual harassment policies provides a nuanced intersectional critique that shows how policies promoted as protecting women’s human rights may reproduce the gender binary and caste hierarchy. Dixit’s analysis will intrigue anyone interested in unpacking how governmental efforts to alleviate social inequalities come to produce the opposite effect.” —Carol Harrington, Senior Lecturer, School of Social and Cultural Studies, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand Through a deep dive into specific ‘problem’ representations in the policymaking on anti- sexual harassment at workplaces (SHW) in India, this book makes broader sense of gendered, caste-based and colonial regimes of power. The author takes a poststructuralist feminist approach to illustrate how these policies disregard collective action and function as gendering and caste-ing practices. The book posits that India’s anti-SHW policies produce specific ‘problems’ and subjects while neglecting certain other ‘problem’ and subject formulations. The author offers guidelines for how diverse subjects must be given equal epistemic credibility to make the policy milieu intersectionally equitable. This book will be of interest to scholars and policymakers in the fields of Gender Studies, Law, Sociology, and Organizational Studies. Anukriti Dixit is an advanced postdoctoral scholar and lecturer in the Interdisciplinary Centre for Gender Studies, University of Bern. She completed her PhD in public policy from the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad. Her areas of interest include poststructuralist, intersectional, feminist, anti-caste and decolonial theories in public policy.