Workplace Sexual Harassment and Women’s Mental Health: Legal Protections and Archaelogical Outcomes

Sexual harassment at work remains a significant problem, one that affects women more than men across sectors and societies. The impacts are not just health-related or occupational but they run deeply into the minds of the psychologically injured survivors. This article is a case study which works with these two themes: the legal protections that women can have against sexual harassment at the workplace, and the psychological effects over time, seen as “archaeological results”—a metaphor of impressions of the mind and social that gradually settle down and persist of these experiences. The paper then critiques applicable international and domestic laws, with specific attention to the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013 in India. It also questions the potential of these laws to be effective instruments when it comes to much deeper trauma and questions of systemic power that underlie harassment. Using feminist theory, psychiatric research, and case studies, the Article contends that an interdisciplinary solution is needed to address workplace harassment — one that involves a combination of legal reform, individual treatment, corporate responsibility, and social change.