Will things really change in American workplaces?
Some are trying to adjust amid the #Me Too era
Women have spoken. Men have fallen. Corporations are nervous. But are American workplaces making real progress in curbing sexual harassment?
Five months after allegations against Harvey Weinstein led to the mass baring of past secrets, the focus is turning to the future. Government is stepping up efforts: In Washington, the House of Representatives is preparing to train every worker, down to the most junior intern, and state legislators across the country are proposing ambitious new laws. Corporate boards and investors from Wall Street to Silicon Valley are going on the offensive, probing for problems to avoid being surprised. Entrepreneurs are developing apps and programs to help victims discover if their harassers have targeted others. Women in entertainment, advertising and other industries are demanding fundamental shifts, including more females in leadership roles.
The #MeToo moment has shifted social attitudes, inspired widespread calls for change and resulted in unprecedented accountability.
But the revelations about the pervasiveness of harassment — and of the legal and institutional failures to address it — illuminate how tough it will be to extinguish.
“We can’t fire our way out of this problem,” said Paula Brantner, who runs sexual harassment workshops for nonprofits and businesses, pointing out that removing individual offenders is not enough.
Systemic problem
Harassment has flourished in part because structures intended to address it are broken: weak laws that fail to protect women, corporate policies that are narrowly drawn and secret settlements that silence women about abuses.
“The reality is, the problem is systemic, and we have to address it at a systemic level,” said Rory Gerberg, also a consultant whose clients include technology companies.
Even as dramatic headlines have captured attention, many women say they’ve seen zero change in their own workplaces. At a Mexican restaurant in Lake Elsinore, Calif., a server named Nikkie Parra fumed through a recent shift as two customers and her boss made sexually suggestive comments.
She gathered the courage to ask co-workers to join her in a suit. When the boss caught wind of her plans, she was fired.
“It felt like hopelessness,” she said later. “It felt like this is not going to change. Especially with what’s going on in the media and all the celebrities, and this still happens.”
Women with wider influence share those anxieties. When Tina Tchen, a lawyer and ex-chief of staff to Michelle Obama, left the White House, she thought she would quietly restart her legal career focusing on workplace issues. Now she is helping to guide the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund, an initiative that sprang up virtually overnight, spearheaded by women in entertainment, and that faces a critical question: whether the more than $20 million donated so far can fund both immediate legal help for low-income workers like Parra and a longer-term strategy of filing potential landmark cases.
Fear-driven shift
Among some major corporations, a fear-driven shift has begun: Harassment is now considered not just a legal liability, but also a serious reputational and business risk. Executives and boards are beginning to look at harassment “the same way you think about other risks to your organization” like security or hacking, said Kaye Foster-Cheek, former head of human resources for Johnson & Johnson and a member of three boards.
The ultimate solution to sexual harassment, many believe, is having more women in positions of power. Until more women are owners, chief executives and bosses, the dynamic may always be the same: a man calling the shots, and a more junior woman afraid to resist or report. (As Time’s Up grows, this will be its central focus, a leader of the group said; offshoots in advertising and journalism have been announced, and others in sports, technology and venture capital are forming.)
‘Fired him on the spot’
Several weeks ago, Renee LaChance, a general contractor in Portland, Ore., was discussing a renovation with a male electrician when he unleashed a stream of explicit comments about her breasts.
“Haven’t you been paying attention?” she asked him, flabbergasted that all the recent news about harassment had not deterred him.
Her solution was simple.
“I’m the person in power in the relationship,” she said. “I fired him on the spot.”