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Deepa Rafeeque: The POSH Enabler

Here’s to Fit the Soul’s Wonder Woman of November, Deepa Rafeeque!

As a fresh law graduate in 1987, Deepa set out to practise law only to discover that it was a completely gender-skewed profession. On her first day at work at the Rajasthan High Court, Jaipur, she found that of the approximately 1,500 lawyers working there, a mere five were women. At her next jobs at the Airports Authority of India, National Small Industries Corporation, and PEC Ltd. All Central Government PSUs, her colleagues were wary of accepting women officers, let alone their input. They refused to acknowledge Deepa’s legal opinions and would approach male colleagues who would offer the same advice that she had given. Although she was intelligent and well-informed, she was still not accepted as equal among her many male colleagues. She constantly needed to overperform to prove herself in a man’s world. In every organisation she has ever worked at, people’s attitudes towards women have been nothing short of discriminatory. She is now doing everything she can to reverse this reality.

Although the law has provisions for equal rights for women, there is a lack of awareness of these laws and constricting social norms that prevent women from exercising their rights. On 9 December 2013, the Government of India enacted the POSH Law—the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013; it seeks to protect women from sexual harassment at their places of work. In Indian corporates, mandatory compliance with the POSH Law is scarce. Keenly conscious of these facts, Deepa has been interested in spreading awareness as the first step and resorting to litigation as the last. She wants to educate people at all levels of society to ensure lasting change.

Deepa and her husband, Muhammed Rafeeque, through their Bangalore-based legal consultancy firm, VLegal, have been empanelled with the Ministry of Women and Child Development, Government of India since 2017. Since then, they have worked on creating POSH awareness in companies, and on opening people’s eyes to the fact that compliance is mandatory for every establishment irrespective of the number or gender distribution of employees. In formalising the training programme, they created a module and called its participants ‘POSH Enablers’. Ever since they started this programme in 2018, they have trained more than 250 people, who have in turn gone on to train more than 1,000 people. Through this network of POSH Enablers, Deepa and her team have been able to create POSH Committees within corporates all over India and to help women across the country understand their rights related to sexual harassment in the workplace.

From her workshops, it is clear that Deepa is a bundle of energy and an encyclopaedia of knowledge on POSH; she makes legal terms simple enough for lay people to understand. She is gifted with enthusiasm and passion that are hard to replicate. Despite her fervour, Deepa finds that most men are uninterested or unwilling to attend workshops; what’s more, even women in certain areas of India are uncomfortable broaching the subjects of gender equality and workplace sexual harassment. However, with her husband, and through VLegal, Deepa is doing all she can to create POSH Enablers and empower people to promote gender neutrality in the workplace.

In addition to this work, Deepa is invested in child safety and in curbing child sexual harassment. Her newest project involves the POCSO (Protection of Children from Sexual Offences) Act, 2012, which provides protection to children against sexual assault, sexual harassment, and pornography, while safeguarding the interests of the children at every stage. Deepa is now trying to create a brigade of POCSO Torchbearers that can ensure the safety of children across the country through education and knowledge dissemination. After all, awareness of the rights and laws that support women and children is key to preventing sexual crimes against them. Most recently, Deepa was invited by the National Commission for Women as a resource person to share suggestions on cybercrime against women and indecent representation of women in the media. As of October 2020, her suggestions are being taken up with the government for suitable amendments in the law.

Deepa yearns for the day when women in the workplace will be viewed as people and equal colleagues, rather than being seen as no more than a gender. Every small step is a drop in the ocean and will go a long way in creating a safer world for women and children in India. Like Deepa, each one of us needs to work towards a gender-neutral workplace and to help raise awareness about sexual crimes.

Go forth and make it happen!