MORE THAN A FEW BAD APPLES
History shows women have toiled long and hard for the right to work free of workplace abuse
MANY people may think it was Anita Hill’s testimony at confirmation hearings on Clarence Thomas’ 1991 nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court that first brought workplace sexual harassment to light. In fact, it was just over 40 years ago that this currently red-hot issue first gained wide media attention.
In October 1977, Working Women United Institute co-sponsored a sexual harassment speak out with Ms. magazine in New York City in which more than 100 women shared heartwrenching stories of unwanted sexually fraught interactions on the job. Soon after, Ms. featured a cover story on sexual harassment, and Redbook, Ladies’ Home Journal, McCall’s, the “Phil Donahue Show” and “Good Morning America” followed with their own stories.
This sudden interest in sexual harassment didn’t just happen. It came after two years of grassroots organizing that began with the case of Cornell University employee Carmita Wood, who was denied unemployment benefits after a professor’s repeated sexual advances forced her out of her job. Three women in the univeristy’s human affairs department, Lin Farley, Susan Meyer and Karen Sauvigné, investigated and found Wood’s experience was no aberration, but a widespread social problem.
The groundswell of activism that followed led to real change. Most fundamentally, the courts ruled that sexual harassment fell under the domain of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. But these laws did not alleviate problems in all types of employment, nor did they correct the cultural tendency to forgive the accused and question the accuser.
I saw that for myself at age 12 in junior high school. My social studies teacher, Mr. Emory, who often replayed the previous night’s news, had us watch Hill recount to the judiciary committee Thomas’ repeated come-ons and vulgar comments and inappropriate behavior.
Up to that point, I had no reason to think my way through life would be any different than my male classmates’. Watching the Thomas nomination play out, I was no longer so sure. The experience turned me into a feminist and set me on a path to becoming a women’s historian.
Women clearly were outraged at how committee members questioned Hill’s morality while sneering at the notion that Thomas had acted as crudely as Hill described. For one thing, in the year after the hearings, sexual harassment complaints filed with the EEOC surged to 10,532 from 6,883 in the 12 months prior.
The nation took notice, too. Corporations and universities introduced sensitivity training. Congress passed laws making employers liable for damages up to $300,000 for workplace discrimination, including sexual harassment.
A year after Hill’s testimony, a record 20 women ran for U.S. Senate, and four were elected, bringing the total to six. The gain was large enough that some journalists dubbed 1992 the “Year of the Woman.”
“Sexual harassment should be a nonpartisan issue that ought to matter as much to men as to women.”
Unfortunately, it was too small to actually create meaningful policy changes for women.
Political analysts now are looking to the next election as another potential “Year of the Woman.” Be that as it may, it should not fall solely to women in Congress to reset the baseline for acceptable workplace behavior.
This current wave of intolerance for men whose lewd behavior, unwanted touching, forced kisses and even sexual assault make work unbearable for women can be a watershed moment for a new generation of young people. We have a responsibility as parents, educators, community members, employers and constituents to make sure that we move past our current shock to sustained action. The first thing to do is to require simple, basic decency in all of our elected leaders, regardless of party.
In 1972, when the National Women’s Political Caucus made its debut on the national scene, an aide of President Richard Nixon quipped that the women at its first conference looked like a burlesque show. Nixon was highly amused at this comparison. He should not have been. Men, up to and including those occupying the White House, should not assume women’s issues are jokes or that treating women badly is a man’s birthright.
Sexual harassment in the 21st century is a product of the patriarchal foundation upon which our nation’s democracy was formed. Greater acknowledgment of this persistent feature of our political institutions and our culture is the necessary first step toward a solution.
Sexual harassment should be a nonpartisan issue that ought to matter as much to men as to women. So it’s troubling that, according to a recent Quorum poll, more women than men, and more Democrats than Republicans on Capitol Hill have shown an interest in talking about and legislating antiharassment policies. A wider understanding that sexual harassment has less to do with sex and more to do with a basic right to work and be in public free of the threat of sexual violence or ridicule could help balance out the gendered and political response to this issue.
We must work to turn this this national #MeToo firestorm into a sustained swell of engagement moving into the elections of 2018 and 2020. In the voting booth, we can pledge to vote out “creep list” offenders. It is my hope as we look toward the centennial of women gaining the vote in 1920 that this will be among our commemorative acts.