SC judge says sexual harrassment about ‘control and domination’ in judgment

Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah on Thursday declared sexual harassment at the workplace “less about sexual desire and more about control and domination” in a recent Supreme Court judgement.

The judgement dated Feb 12, seen by Dawn.com today, reviewed a petition filed against a 2023 order by the Lahore High Court in a sexual harassment case.

A female doctor Sidra Zafar had filed a complaint against the petitioner Muhammad Din over alleged harassment and misconduct before the Punjab Ombudsperson in 2019.

The respondent had detailed how she was subjected to “abuse, verbal assaults, and character assassination” by her driver who engaged in “inappropriate conduct, using indecent language and behaving unethically with female patients and by spreading malicious rumours about her”.

SC’s judgement noted that Zafar lacked the “authority to remove the petitioner from his position” despite many requests to the department to transfer the petitioner.

Punjab Ombudsperson had ruled that the petitioner’s actions constituted harassment and imposed a penalty of compulsory retirement for Din.

The petitioner had sought representation before the Punjab governor which was dismissed in the 2020 impugned order. Later, Din invoked the constitutional jurisdiction of the LHC by filing a writ petition against the impugned order, which was also dismissed in 2023.

SC dismissed the petition against the LHC’s decision stating, “[The] contentions raised by the learned counsel for the petitioner have been convincingly answered in the impugned judgment.”

“No jurisdictional error, illegality or procedural irregularity in the impugned judgment has been pointed out … the impugned judgment does not warrant any interference.”

In his judgement, Justice Shah highlighted that sexual harassment in the workplace remained a critical issue in the country.

He said, “At the outset, it is imperative to recognise that workplace harassment remains a pressing global issue, affecting millions of workers across various sectors.”

“Women are slightly more likely than men to have faced harassment over their careers.”

His judgement also cited a feminist, legal scholar Catherine MacKinnon, who described harassment as “not as individual misconduct but as systemic sex-based discrimination that reinforces gender hierarchies in the workplace”.

It further said, “However, gender-based harassment is not solely about hierarchy — it is fundamentally about who is perceived as having the right to wield authority … Thus, while sexual harassment is primarily understood as a power-based behaviour, individuals at any level of a hierarchy can perpetrate harassment, particularly when supported by gendered or social reinforcements.”