RAWALPINDI, March 20: The institutions and organizations in Pakistan, following examples of Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and India, should also adopt the code of conduct for gender justice at workplaces to enable men and women to work together with dignity.

This demand was made by members of Alliance Against Sexual Harassment (Aasha), an alliance of 10 organizations, on Saturday during an awareness raising programme organized at a local hotel.

Like domestic violence, honour killings and other social evils, gender disparity and sexual harassment at workplaces were also adversely affecting the lives and careers of women, they said.

Speaking to the participants, mostly comprising employees of a local hotel, Ms Aqsa Khan, representative of Action Aid, said sections 100 and 111 of the International Labour Organization (ILO) Convention made it incumbent on every organization to adopt a gender code of conduct. Despite ratification of the ILO Convention by Pakistan, majority of the organizations here did not implement any code of conduct.

From bus stops to public transport vehicles and offices, women were harassed due to absence of any prohibitive law at national level, Ms Khan said.

"Gender harassment at work place includes unwelcome sexual advances, request for sexual favours or other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature, creating an intimidating, hostile or offensive work environment, or the attempt to punish the refusal to comply to such a request," she said.

Aasha, Ms Khan said, had prepared a code of conduct for gender justice at workplace, based on research on relevant polices in democratic countries. She said the women development ministry took the lead in evolving the code through a participatory process with broad based consultations in all provinces. Representatives of trade unions, employer's associations, academia, jurist and lawyers, government organizations and civil society members took part in the process.

Technical meetings were also held with experts, ILO and the labour ministry in this regard, she added.

Sonia Zahoor, programme officer of Bedari, said harassment at workplace left sever psychological scars on the personality of women. Gender harassment, she said, usually occurred between colleagues, when they were alone, therefore, usually it was difficult to produce evidence. She said the victim should immediately report an offensive behaviour of her colleague to some one she trusted, even if she did not want to lodge a formal complaint at the time.

She also asked the management of every organization to discourage harassment of women employees. She said as many as 226 private organizations had already adopted the code prepared by Aasha, the positive impacts of which had appeared in those organizations. Many other organizations were also willing to adopt the code, she maintained.

On the occasion, members of Bedari also staged a play which highlighted sexual harassment at workplace and its repercussions on the life of the victim. The play was aimed at creating awareness among men about the dignity of women and the vitality of their due role in national development.

Through the play, the actors also asked the women to raise their voices against the injustices meted out to them at their workplace. They also urged the policy-makers to make laws for eliminating gender disparity at workplaces for converting our society into a balanced and tolerant one.