No guarantee of change
BILL O’REILLY’s ousting from Fox News – nine months after similarly lurid charges of sexual harassment forced the resignation of Roger Ailes, the Fox chief executive – has opened another window into sexual abuse of women at Fox and in the workplace generally.
The serial nature of the alleged abuse, as well as Fox’s response to it, is also a reminder that exposing wrongdoing is no guarantee of change.
When Fox said on Wednesday it was severing ties with O’Reilly after a “thorough and careful review of the allegations”, it neglected to note that the scrutiny was not prompted by the allegations themselves – which the company already knew about – but by the defections of dozens of advertisers from The O’Reilly Factor and a drop in the company’s stock price. Fox heaped praise on O’Reilly in announcing his departure. In all, the company has paid at least $85 million to resolve sexual abuse scandals involving Ailes and O’Reilly, with $65m going to the two men in the form of exit pay.
That’s not deterrence, let alone true accountability. It is, however, a good illustration of the entrenched reality of practices that have discounted, demeaned and derailed women’s work lives for decades. Those practices include not only sexual harassment, but also persistent disparities in pay and promotion, as well as impediments in child care, scheduling and other workplace policies.
Those barriers to women are no secret. Their injustice is obvious. Yet they continue: The days are long gone when objective factors like experience could even remotely justify women’s relatively low pay. On average, women today make 22 percent less per hour than men, even after controlling for experience, education and location. The gap persists even after controlling that black and Hispanic workers have historically had lower wages.
Women even make less than men in jobs they dominate, like nurse and preschool or kindergarten teacher. Women not only make less than similarly educated men, but the gap tends to widen as the education level rises.