Signs of #MeTooNZ hope

Lawyers have been shocked out of their complacency. Now other professions must address harassment in their ranks.

Twenty years ago, long before the recent revelations of sexual misconduct at major New Zealand law firms, questions began to be asked about diversity and discrimination in the legal profession.

At the time, there were few hard statistics about gender and ethnicity in legal workplaces, and the discrimination workers might be facing. So, in the late 1990s, the Auckland District Law Society gave its Employment Equity Committee leave to ask the hard questions.

A multi-page survey went out on paper, to every practitioner in Auckland – around 4000 lawyers in all. It asked about gender, ethnicity and sexual preference, among other things.

One member of that committee, now an in-house lawyer at a government agency, tells me that when the surveys came back, the committee was shocked by the response. ‘‘Because the internet wasn’t a big deal then, we didn’t understand how truly awful the patriarchy can be when they have an opportunity to be anonymous,’’ she says.

There were ‘‘dick pics’’ and the word ‘‘fag’’ was written across the page a lot. ‘‘Many men objected to being asked about sexual preference. Vehemently objected. Abusive language and threats were common. We were quite shocked, as this had only gone to lawyers.’’

Some of the survey’s findings were collated, my source says, but the project was eventually, quietly, dropped.

Fast-forward 20 years and once again a survey – perhaps more troublingly, a law school survey – has found that little has changed, at least when it comes to attitudes.

This is telling, and it does not bode well for the next generation of lawyers; you would have to assume that the attitudes revealed by the Auckland Law School’s 2016 Gender Report will be those taken into the workforce when the students graduate.

But this time the issues have been addressed. The students will know that they are not alone, that this is not just a problem with the ‘‘Jafas’’, given the amount of coverage given recently to law school camps at Otago University, for example.

It will take time to evaluate whether the measures taken will make a difference. But at least the legal profession and the law schools have had the wake-up call.

The Russell McVeagh revelations, and the

stories from the law school camps, have shocked lawyers out of their complacency. The profession knows it has to find a way to fix the problem.

Have other industries had that same wakeup call?

Critics have expressed fear that #MeTooNZ willl become a witch-hunt of men who ogle colleagues or clients, or make offensive ‘‘jokes’’. But that’s not what this is about.

Those people are irrelevant artefacts from another century.

Law is not the only sphere of New Zealand working life that has a serious problem. Holding industries and institutions to account for harassment identified in their ranks is important.

Only this will force the culture change that makes our companies and institutions safer places for our kids than they have been for us.