Sexual harassment should not be a fact of life

I never really admit winter is coming until the clocks change in the fall. If the sun is still shining and the temperatures hovering above five degrees, it’s all good.

Once the clocks change, there’s no escaping it.

It’s true of many things in life. There’s lots of stuff we know to be true, but often we may be hard pressed to explain how; it just seems so obvious.

Take this recent study from Arizona State University (https://asunow.asu. edu/20151027-study-showsangry-men-gain-influenceand-angry-women-lose-influence), in which the researchers found “men use anger to influence others, but women actually lose influence when they allow anger into an argument.”

In other words, if men express anger, the result is positive, but if women express anger, the result is negative.

One of the researchers, Jessica Salerno, explained the results: “We found that when men expressed their opinion with anger, participants rated them as more credible, which made them less confident in their own opinion. But when women expressed identical arguments and anger, they were perceived as more emotional, which made participants more confident in their own opinion.

“This effect can’t be explained by women communicating anger less effectively or looking different when they express anger because we took all of that out of the equation. (…) The effect was due to participants thinking that anger came from a man versus a woman.”

I’m pretty sure when the study was released last week there was a collective and widespread eyeroll amongst women across the continent. Many of my friends wondered why such a study was needed when we all knew this to be true.

Well, evidence is important, and it is also useful. I heard pretty similar arguments in the days following the #Metoo social media phenomenon. Using the hashtag on Twitter and Facebook showed other women and men the sheer volume of experiences related to sexual harassment and assault.

I was already familiar with the statistics so the volume didn’t surprise me. I was surprised though, by the number of people who were shocked at how many of their friends and colleagues used #Metoo.

Similar to the #beenrapedneverreported, #everydaysexism, #yesallwomen hashtags used variously on Twitter since 2014, #Metoo, with its almost two million tweets in the first 24 hours of Oct. 15, focused on bringing women’s experiences forward.

Arising from the Harvey Weinstein scandal, #Metoo offered a platform for women to break the silence (in some cases, not for the first time) about their experiences.

We shouldn’t be surprised. Not that long ago, Spaniard’s Bay was rocked by allegations of sexual harassment in the volunteer firefighting department. Our former minister of finance, Cathy Bennett, last year spoke in detail about the online harassment, including threats, she has received since being elected as an MHA.

We need to deal with this because how we live our lives as women is very different from how men live their lives. Dr. Fiona Vera-gray of Durham University has spent the last five years looking at the choices women make to manage their fear of sexual harassment and assault (http:// www.bbc.com/news/world41614720). Her work is echoed by another piece of research in which more than half of the 42,000 women surveyed reported limiting their activities out of fear.

Another researcher, Liz Kelly, talks about this as “safety work,” the conscious and unconscious strategy development we do every day to make sure we don’t put ourselves at risk. As Vera-gray puts it, “Despite how common it is, or perhaps because of it, we rarely even think about the routine choices and changes we make to maintain a sense of safety.”

Ask your male friends, colleagues and family members if they think about where they park, how far they are from the elevator in a hotel, if they pretend to get a call to avoid a conversation with a stranger, if they changed an outfit because the colour was too dramatic. Now ask the women in your circle the same thing.

Don’t be surprised by the answers you get. Do engage in conversation about how we make a difference going forward.