The ‘Problem’ of SHW as Sex-Based Discrimination: Exclusion of Intersectional Subjects

This chapter explores how SHW has come to be a ‘problem’ of sex-based discrimination. The idea of ‘sex-based’ implies a kind of discrimination done at a workplace that is attributed to the biological sex of a person. Or discrimination done unto a person due to their biological sex (female in the case of workplace harassment). This problematization was identified on the basis of the direct ‘problem’ setting language used not only in the policies within India but also in a global policy context. I present three technologies of government through which sex-based discrimination is established: The unwelcomeness tenet, the quid pro quo tenet and the hostile work environment tenet. I argue that these technologies deepen a binary understanding of ‘sex’, thereby confining the ‘sex-based’ problematization to a ‘problem’ between the sex/gender binaries.