It’s been a very bad year indeed for women in India. As the world settles into the New Year, India’s daughters are mourning the death of their “braveheart Nirbhaya,” the 23-year-old who was brutally raped and has now succumbed to her injuries.  This is symptomatic of the agony, pain, humiliation and wretchedness that Indian women suffered in 2012.

Women Talk Online contributor Soofia Asad from Pakistan complained against sexual harassment at the workplace and was asked instead to “apologize for instigating the incident.” But she has made up her mind to do something about it.

Talking about sexual harassment remains a taboo in Pakistani society, where women usually choose to stay silent for fear of repercussions. But now, there is one woman with the courage to speak out. It took her three years to report and ten years to write about the sexual harassment she had faced at work.

Dr. Fouzia Saeed, author of “Taboo,” a story about the culture of prostitution in Pakistan, has recently launched her second book, “Working with the Sharks: Countering Sexual Harassment in Our Lives” in Pakistan. The book was officially launched in Islamabad on December 22 to coincide with the National Day for Working Women. It is an account of the author’s personal experience of sexual harassment by a senior male colleague when she was working at a senior administrative position at the UN Gender Program in Pakistan and how she and her eleven female colleagues took up the case against him.