SHe-Box (Sexual Harassment electronic-Box), launched in 2017 under the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition, and Redressal) Act, 2013 (“PoSH Act”), was envisioned as a centralized platform to facilitate the filing and tracking of workplace sexual harassment complaints in India. The portal aims to provide an accessible and efficient grievance redressal mechanism for women across organised, unorganised, public and private sectors, including domestic workers. However, despite its potential and relaunch in 2024, SHe-Box has fallen short in addressing the systemic barriers to reporting harassment, thus failing to meet both domestic and international obligations in preventing and responding to workplace sexual harassment.

The PoSH Act aligns with India’s international obligations, notably under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (“CEDAW”). Article 11 of CEDAW obligates states to ensure women’s equal rights at work, including protection from harassment. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (“ICCPR”) further enforces this by guaranteeing women access to effective legal remedies (Articles 2 and 26). Domestically, the Indian Constitution upholds the right to equality under Articles 14 and 15, right to life and personal liberty under Article 21, which has been interpreted to include the right to live with dignity and free from harassment, and Article 19(1)(g) which confers the right to practice any profession. Despite these legal obligations, SHe-Box has not been effective in ensuring the necessary remedies for women facing harassment.

To begin with, engagement with the portal has been concerningly low. Only 513 complaints had been filed between 2017 to 2019, and not even half of those could be disposed of. As of December 2021, many states recorded abysmally low usage. Regions like Andaman & Nicobar Islands, Lakshadweep, Nagaland, and Mizoram recorded zero complaints since the portal’s inception. Even in states like Bihar, Maharashtra, and Delhi, which recorded relatively higher complaints, many remain unresolved. As of July 2022, the portal had recorded only 1,349 complaints in total – averaging fewer than 245 per year in a country with millions of women in the workforce and the alarming prevalence of workplace sexual harassment.

A significant barrier is perhaps the portal’s reliance on digital infrastructure, excluding women in rural areas – most vulnerable to sexual harassment and least likely to report – who lack access to smartphones, internet connectivity, or digital literacy. This is in contradiction to the CEDAW Committee’s General Recommendation No. 19 which requires states to ensure services are accessible to victims belonging to rural and isolated communities. This can be remedied through the provision of offline alternatives such as toll-free helplines or kiosks.

The portal’s resources are available only in Hindi and English, making it inaccessible to many women who speak regional languages. This oversight further contradicts the CEDAW Committee’s General Recommendation No. 33, which mandates the elimination of cultural and linguistic barriers to access to justice. India’s diverse linguistic landscape requires grievance mechanisms that cater to all women, regardless of their language.

Beyond accessibility, structural flaws within the portal itself undermine its utility. Registration of Internal Committees and Local Committees on SHe-Box is voluntary, relying on nodal officers to upload committee details – a process that is neither mandatory nor uniformly followed. Unregistered committees lead to delays as nodal officers are first notified to initiate the registration process. The absence of mandatory registration requirements and lack of consequences for non-compliance discourage companies from actively engaging with the portal, exacerbating delays in addressing complaints.

Furthermore, there is no clear mechanism to address the failure of committees to act promptly, such as when an IC or LC refuses to register itself on the portal or update the portal with the status of the complaint. While the portal claims to align with the PoSH Act’s particulars, it provides no clarity on consequences for non-compliance specific to SHe-Box – an area the Act does not cover. The lack of penalties or enforcement measures for unresponsive committees creates a critical gap in accountability.

While SHe-Box was designed to streamline the reporting of workplace sexual harassment, its current shortcomings prevent it from fulfilling both domestic and international legal obligations. To be effective, the platform must improve accessibility, expand language options, enforce mandatory committee registration, and offer independent or supplementary complaint resolution mechanisms.