Rape, murder of Kolkata doctor highlight failure of workplace safety provisions for women

A 31-year-old doctor was raped and murdered in her workplace – Kolkata’s RG Kar postgraduate medical college hospital on August 9. All she wanted was to rest in a seminar hall for a while during a 36-hour shift when she was attacked.

This is a heinous instance of gender-based violence at the workplace. It is a failure of the institution to abide by the Sexual Harassment of Women (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, or PoSH Act, 2013. It must be recognised as a major example of the breakdown of women’s safety at the premises of the employer – in this case, the West Bengal government, whoever be the intermediaries.

The hospital administration resorted to first describing the incident as an unnatural death – suicide – and then blaming the woman. Before the institution’s principal Sandip Ghosh resigned, he said that “it was irresponsible of the girl to go to the seminar hall alone at night”.

The seminar hall was on the premises of the employer and thus subject to Indian labour laws guaranteeing the prevention, prohibition and redressal of sexual violence. The woman also had the right to occupational safety and health and favourable working conditions.

The case has since been handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigation, which will work under the supervision of the Calcutta High Court.

Like many previous instances, it stands at the intersection of gender and labour rights.

Women in the medical workforce is not only a matter of labour laws, which squarely fail to recognise their specific needs of safety and security, but also power hierarchy across the ranks of doctors, nurses and paramedics.

There are some basic aspects of workplace practices and safety to be focused on here:

a. A woman worker was subjected to sexual violence in her workplace

b. She did not have a safe place to rest after her shift

c. Her employer blamed her for being at the wrong place at the wrong time, justifying the violence – while she was in her workplace.

d. She was working a continuous 36-hour shift, four times the standard eight-hour work day.

Health services fall under the umbrella of the professions of care, which include nursing, child and elderly care and domestic work. By its very nature, such work requires round-the-clock activity, empathetic and tactile engagement and prolonged sharing of spaces with patients, colleagues, staff and visitors.

In such situations, the boundaries between the personal and the professional tend to be blurred.

What guarantees that women workers are safe in these conditions? At the same time, how can it be ensured that they are not excluded from workplaces under the pretext of their safety? Are there any conversations about the available legal provisions, such as the workplace harassment prevention law? Legally as well as for the employer, what constitutes sexual harassment given the likely prolonged contact between women medical professionals, patients and visitors in healthcare institutions?

In a 24x7 workplace, medical professionals are on call all the time. While on call, where at the workplace should women workers be? Can they use toilets? Where should they rest, if that is at all possible? Can they walk safely to their quarters within the compound of the hospital if their shift ends late at night or early in the morning?

There are no clear answers, but underlining all these questions is the gendered identity of the worker. It is as if women and the 24x7 workplace are contradictory to each other. Was the young doctor at RG Kar expected to be invisible during the night shift as she worked 36 hours straight?

The Factories Act and the Shops and Commercial Establishment Acts have provisions limiting night-shift work by women to prevent sexual violence and safeguard them from the physical dangers of long working hours.

Women working in sectors like hospitals and agriculture are exempt from such limits. However, subsequent court orders, for example, the Madras High Court in the Vasantha R judgment of 2000, have created opportunities for women to work night shifts, with the condition that employers provide them with safe spaces for work and rest, as well as ensuring transportation home. These measures are intended to act as deterrants against sexual harassment.

The verdict also stipulated secure conditions of work, leisure, health and hygiene and proper lighting along with 12 consecutive hours of rest or a gap between shifts.

Were these provisions adhered to at RG Kar Hospital?

Following this incident, medical service providers – women constituting a large section of them – across Indian states have pointed out the dismal state of their safety at workplaces where they face abuse ranging from sexual harassment to physical assault and psychological trauma.

The duration of the work day for resident doctors in Indian health establishments has been under the scanner for quite some time as well. The 2023 Post-Graduate Medical Education Regulations stipulate that resident doctors should work for “reasonable” hours and rest for “reasonable time” in a day, without specifying what “reasonable” means here. This is a direct contravention of the laws governing Occupational Safety and Health and Working Conditions.

Yet, there is hope in seeing the struggle on the streets across West Bengal with women occupying public spaces the night before Independence Day. They are asking: who can be where and when?

For women, these questions have been met with admonition, advice and punishment throughout our lives. A large part of me says, why not be where I want to be, but the other part, conditioned by a patriarchal world, doubts my own disposition.

I hope that women taking to the streets and occupying public spaces in “forbidden hours” is just the tip of the iceberg. Next, is to push for accountability and comprehensive measures towards occupational safety and health and workspaces and working conditions free of gender-based violence.

Geetisha Dasgupta has written this article on behalf of Surokkha Istehar, a West Bengal-based collective of theatre workers, independent artists, queer-feminist activists and educationists that works to ensure gender justice in theatre spaces. Surokkha Istehar stands with workers and gender minorities in all workspaces.