Different era, but same crap on misconduct

When I was growing up, they told us girls we could have it all. Careers in sciences and maths (or whatever we wanted), financial independence, sex appeal, kids … like, ALL of it. Along with those Spice Girls CDs, we bought it.

We knew our mums were the glass-ceiling breakers. The ones who wore horrible mousey suits that mirrored male clothing, the ones who walked through life with an “ain’t no one going to protect you but you” mentality. They went to work armed with the full knowledge that many men didn’t want them there and viewed them mostly as sex objects. They marched into offices with a belief that battle scars were well worth the earning.

When it came to my generation, I can’t say that anyone really pulled us aside in school and said, “Actually, some men are still going to behave quite badly, so be prepared.” Instead, they told us, “You go, girl.” And so we went, empowered, but arguably not quite ready for the slap in the face (or literally, the hand on the butt) that is this persistent sexual harassment on the job.

It was supposed to be different for us. Not just because the “Mad Men” generation was retiring, but because the boys we grew up with were more than used to seeing their own mothers go to work. Because they came of age in an era of less institutional and legislated gender discrimination. Because they were taught we were equal to them.

Instead, it’s the same crap, different era. New polling data from the Angus Reid Institute indicate more than half of women aged 25 to 44 say they’ve been sexually harassed in their working lives. For women relatively new to the working world, aged 18 to 24, that number is still as high as one-in-three.

There is a heightened cynicism among millennial and younger Gen-X women, a harder line on key attitudes regarding sexual harassment. Unlike female baby boomers, they’re more likely to reject the argument that a lot of ambiguity exists around what sexual harassment is or how it’s defined. And whether the careers of some innocent parties are ruined in the takedown of a lot of guilty jerks is of less concern to them than to some others.

While almost all women — 89 per cent — report using various strategies to avoid sexual harassment (or worse) at work, younger women are more likely to resent having to employ said techniques. Older women are slightly more likely to outright embrace evasive measures and view responsibility for not being harassed as ultimately their own.

If the attitudes of younger men are anything to go by, whether they resent it or not women entering or turning the first corners of their working lives have a long road ahead when it comes to some of the male colleagues with whom they’ll slog in the trenches in the coming decades. Unlike any other age or gender demographic, a significant segment of men aged 18 to 34 are most likely to say that expressing sexual interest (30 per cent) in a colleague, or giving them a shoulder rub (27 per cent) is acceptable workplace behaviour. They’re also most likely to say it’s OK to make comments about a coworker’s body (25 per cent), or tell off-colour jokes (27 per cent).

Little wonder, then, that younger women take a more jaded view of the #MeToo movement’s staying power. Millennial and younger Gen-X women are significantly more likely than baby boomers to say that while people may be paying attention now, nothing will really change. We might have been told, “You go, girl,” when we were young, but they didn’t tell us just how long, or how far we’d have to travel, to be free of sexual harassment.

They marched into offices with a belief that battle scars were well worth the earning.