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Summary

The scoping study confirms the information available from the previous studies commissioned by AAN in 2014 and 2016 in various big cities of the country, and has also enabled to generate some new inferences for upcoming cities. The study clearly indicates that sexual harassments in public places are widespread, though less compared to core city areas. At least 6 in 10 women between age 14-30 have faced such incidence, and the occurrence of such incident for certain victims were very frequent. While girls and women were mostly aware enough to identify certain activity as a violence, the awareness was particularly low among the boys/men in the same regards. The majority of women were able to identify the various forms of non-verbal, verbal and physical harassment as violence against women.

This study identifies a major policy gap to protect women from violence. Present laws and provisions are limited inside domestic sphere and organization context. No laws have been able to incorporate verbal, non-verbal harassment into its jurisdiction. Although physical harassment is processed under the ‘intent to rape’ clause, this study suggests that very few cases of physical harassment ever get reported to the police.