Madhya Pradesh continues to lag behind in women safety issues in the country as it failed to find place in the top ten states in a survey conducted by Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) over ‘women at workplace’.
Madhya Pradesh finished at poor 12 among the 32 states and union territories, where the survey was conducted and its findings were made public on September 13, 2016. North Eastern state Sikkim tops the list while the national capital has been placed on the last spot.
The condition is when the state government makes tall claims of running schemes and programs for the safety and security of the women in the state. Facilities like women helpline 1090 is run by the police department so that they could inform the police without any hassles about any crime committed against them. While as per claims through ‘Dial 100’ women are provided security and they could return fearlessly till late night from their workplace, besides they are made aware with the laws made to stop harassment at workplace.
The survey was conduct on the basis of four main factors that include legal restrictions on women’s working hours in factories, retail, and the IT industry; the responsiveness of the state’s criminal justice system to crimes affecting working women, such as sexual harassment; the number of women workers in the state as a percentage of total workers; and the number of incentives the state’s startup and industrial policies offer women entrepreneurs. The maximum score was 40 and the Madhya Pradesh secured 18.7 points. All categories were scored from 1-10. The ‘justice’ score is the average of the percentage of FIRs that are charge sheeted and the percentage of trials that end in conviction. For the ‘freedom to work’ score, states received 3 points for every sector where women were able to work at night and a bonus point for having liberalized laws in all three sectors reviewed.
Nathan Associates and the CSIS Wadhwani Chair gathered data primarily from official government publications, occasionally supplemented by reliable media sources.