In response to the recent brutal gang-rape and murder of a young woman in Delhi followed by widespread protests that shook the entire establishment, industry body CII has set up a taskforce for creating a safe environment for women.
To be headed by Subodh Bhargava, the past president of Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), the taskforce will consult civil society, students and women’s groups apart from industry and submit its report to the authorities at the earliest, according to a statement issued by Adi Godrej, President, CII.
It will also provide inputs to the taskforce set up by the Government, headed by the Home Secretary.
“It is now time for all citizens of this country to stand together to create a regime that ensures that such heinous crimes never get repeated,” CII said in a release.
The industry body said the legal system should be deterrent enough to the potential perpetrators of such crimes. This can be done if the judicial system ensures two things — punishment is meted out swiftly and definitively within a specified timeframe, say three months and the nature of the punishment is exemplary, it said.
Crimes against women
Even as the number of women in the workforce is rising, crimes against women are growing at the rate of 4 per cent, according to National Crime Records Bureau data in early 2012.
According to a recent survey by industry body Assocham, nearly 73 per cent of women working in night shifts said they felt insecure in all major hubs of economic activities.
The study, based on feedback from over 2,000 women in small, medium and large scale firms in 10 major cities, found Delhi as the most unsafe metro for women who work in night shifts, followed by Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai and Mumbai.
It said the women who felt “most vulnerable’’ were working in BPOs, IT sector, hospitality and media.