Ending Harassment Culture

It started with two words. In October 2017, the actress Alyssa Milano tweeted, “If you’ve been sexually harassed or assaulted write ‘me too’ as a reply to this tweet.” More than a decade after Tarana Burke launched the Me Too movement to support survivors of sexual assault, millions shared the #MeToo hashtag, and the issue of sexual harassment rocketed into the headlines. Women in entertainment responded with two more words: Time’s up. Before the organization TIME’S UP was launched in January 2018, 700,000 female farmworkers from Alianza Nacional de Campesinas sent a letter to show solidarity with the actresses who had come forward. The two groups quickly joined forces, along with other women earning low wages who had experienced sexual harassment in silence and already had been fighting for safety, equity, and dignity in the workplace. As Oprah Winfrey powerfully declared at the Golden Globes, sexual harassment “transcends any culture, geography, race, religion, politics, or workplace.” Sexual harassment is both a product and a cause of the lack of power that undermines women in every field, from farming to tech, and at every stage of their careers, from entry-level jobs to leadership positions. It was clear to the founders of TIME’S UP — and to me, having spent a career working for gender equality — that toppling one abuser, or even many, will not stop sexual harassment. Instead, tackling the issue requires a deliberate effort to address barriers that threaten both safety and equity, including discrimination, the pay gap, unequal caregiving responsibilities, and negative norms and stereotypes. Ending harassment is not an isolated goal; it’s integral to ending other forms of gender inequity. Since the very beginning, the mindset and mission of TIME’S UP has been to join with all women, doing jobs of all kinds, in a concerted effort to demand safe, fair, and dignified work. How Harassment Holds Women — and Businesses — Back According to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, up to 85% of women in the United States report having experienced sexual harassment at work. No industry is immune, but a recent analysis of more than 85,000 harassment charges between 2005 and 2015 found that the highest rates are in the accommodation and food service industries, followed by retail, manufacturing, health care, and social assistance — industries in which women, especially those of color, are overrepresented. Sexual harassment is both personally devastating and economically damaging. Women who experience sexual harassment at work are six times more likely to change jobs, often to less desirable fields with lower pay. Many women who don’t leave their jobs face economic retaliation, including pay cuts or termination, if they speak up about harassment. The Big Idea Stay informed with emails about everything new we launch in this and other Big Idea projects. Sign Up for Updates Not only is this bad for women, it’s bad for business, too. For each employee who is harassed, employers stand to lose an estimated $22,500 in productivity, on top of the costs of employee turnover, legal fees, and reputational harm. The economy as a whole also suffers as a result of the enormous lost potential of women who are effectively chased out of jobs or whose careers stall, sometimes even before they start. Sexual harassment doesn’t take place in a vacuum. It is rooted in broader discrimination, barriers, and biases. In the United States, women are paid, on average, only 80 cents for every dollar paid to men. When pay is broken down by race, the gap can be even wider: While white women are paid 77 cents on the dollar, black women are paid 61 cents, Native American women 58 cents, and Latina women only 53 cents. Women are overrepresented in low-wage jobs and underrepresented in leadership roles. They also shoulder greater caregiving responsibilities for children and elderly parents, which can compromise their ability to make a living or rise through the ranks. Ultimately, sexual harassment is deeply intertwined with these other forms of discrimination and inequality. It also makes it difficult for women to advocate for better work conditions. We must go well beyond strengthening and enforcing sexual harassment laws and policies to addressing the inequality that creates the conditions in which it thrives. Focusing on harassment means also focusing on issues like equal pay, paid family and medical leave, affordable child care, and pregnancy discrimination. And we must continue to promote the increased representation of women — and women of color, in particular — in leadership and managerial roles and ensure dignity in all types of jobs. Through these actions, we can begin to level the playing field. Sexual harassment and broader discrimination hold women back, making it harder for them to succeed at work, and, in an unfortunate cycle, contribute to the power imbalance that allows sexual harassment and abuse to continue. Breaking this cycle is no small agenda and demands changing laws, business practices, and our cultural norms. How to Break the Cycle Change laws. The 20th century marked steady, incremental progress toward women’s equality. It started with suffrage, followed by major legislation prohibiting sex discrimination in education and employment and outlawing wage disparities based on sex. Under federal law, sexual harassment has been illegal in the United States since 1980. But to realize true equality, we need to improve federal and state laws by, for example, strengthening the standard for illegal harassment and increasing penalties and the length of time people have to bring a claim. Important progress is already underway. In the two years since #MeToo went viral, 15 states have passed laws to bolster protections against sexual harassment, including New York, where TIME’S UP played an active role. We also need to build on recent progress to ensure equal pay and institute other policies to support working women. Forty-nine states have pay equity provisions on the books, and so far this year, at least eight states have passed new laws to address the wage gap. In the U.S. Congress, the Paycheck Fairness Act passed the House of Representatives with bipartisan support, though it faces uncertain prospects in the Senate. Eight states and the District of Columbia have enacted paid family and medical leave laws. We should build on the current momentum at both the state and federal levels to continue to strengthen equal pay laws and extend protections to all employees, including farmworkers, domestic workers, and independent contractors; pass paid family and medical leave; ensure affordable child care; and guarantee protections against pregnancy discrimination. Change business practices. The private sector, which employs the majority of working women in the United States, can act without waiting for additional legal requirements. Some organizations have started to make headway: A growing number of C-suite executives consider part of their mission to be their responsibility to society, and this should include ending workplace sexual harassment and inequity. Company policies that promote safety and equity are good for workers, good for women, and good for businesses’ bottom lines. Some companies are trying to effect change, and others need prodding. Both cooperation and external pressure will be necessary. For example, through the TIME’S UP Legal Defense Fund, we supported claims against McDonald’s on behalf of workers who endured harassment, abuse, and retaliation. A year later, when these conditions persisted, TIME’S UP released an open letter to the McDonald’s leadership signed by thousands of individuals and a coalition of advocates demanding that the company act to end harassment and retaliation at their restaurants. We recently stood in solidarity with athletes who took on Nike, claiming pregnancy discrimination in their endorsement contracts. After sustained public pressure, Nike announced that they would no longer suspend athletes or dock their pay because of pregnancy or absences from their sport due to parenting, and other sports companies have made similar promises. And we recently spoke at the annual shareholder meeting of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, to push them to release median pay data, a practice that needs to become the standard to assess and address the pay gap fully. Businesses should improve policies and training to prevent sexual harassment and retaliation, address bias and discrimination, increase gender and racial diversity in leadership, eliminate pay gaps, and make family policies like paid leave and child care accessible to their workers. Change cultural norms. The explosion of #MeToo represented a powerful cultural moment, brought unprecedented attention to sexual harassment and abuse, and served as a call to action. But safe, fair, and dignified work will become a reality only after entrenched attitudes and behaviors change. Long-term cultural change depends on a widespread evolution of the social norms that have allowed sexual harassment and gender inequality to persist in the first place. Attitudes about the way boys and men see girls and women, and the way girls and women see themselves, are ingrained early and deeply. Stereotypes — of strong, smart boys and submissive, sexy girls, for instance — are constantly reinforced by social media, news coverage, advertisements, and the entertainment industry. These biases affect the jobs women hold, the way they are treated at work, reactions by strangers on the street, and even family expectations at home. One of the best ways to penetrate deeply embedded norms is to change who is telling the stories for movies and television, which in turn changes the stories that are told. Shonda Rhimes, a prominent writer and producer and one of the earliest leaders of TIME’S UP, hires women writers and actors for her shows, features strong and accomplished working women in leading roles, and creates story lines that take on issues like sexual harassment and the pay gap, showing how these overlapping experiences of inequality at work sap opportunity and power. At TIME’S UP, we are also working to shift culture by giving opportunity to more women, including women of color and LGBTQ+ people. When TIME’S UP learned that only 4% of Hollywood films were directed by women, we challenged key players in entertainment to take the 4% Challenge, in which they would agree to announce a feature film project with a female director within 18 months. More than 120 influential figures answered the call, including Amazon, Universal, and Warner Brothers. An analysis by the Annenberg Center at the University of Southern California showed that at least 12 of the top 100 films will have a female director in the next year and a half — more than twice as many as in 2018, and more than in any year they have measured since 1980. Prior research by the center has demonstrated that women directors lead to fuller representation of women of diverse ages and racial and ethnic backgrounds, members of the LGBTQ+ community, people with disabilities, and other often marginalized groups. We also have looked beyond entertainment to shift social attitudes. For example, when soccer players from the U.S. Women’s National Team used their moment in the spotlight to talk about equal pay and women’s rights after winning their fourth world championship in July, they sparked a spirited national conversation. Despite their undeniable success, they are paid less than the men’s team. Their fight for pay equity for themselves and women in all industries has shed new light on the shocking disparities between women and men and ignited the fight for equal pay. TIME’S UP and the USWNT Players Association have launched a partnership to sustain a focus on the pay gap and highlight solutions. It’s starting to work. Attitudes are beginning to change, and broad shifts in cultural norms can happen reasonably quickly. We can look to the strategic, coordinated campaign that helped create a sea change in support for same-sex marriage in recent years, which went from a strong majority opposing it in 2001 to a strong majority supporting it in 2017. Eliminating sexual harassment and ensuring safe, fair, and dignified employment for women in all workplaces will not be easy, but it is time to redouble our efforts. If we seize this moment, we can bring together business leaders and activists, culture creators and policy makers. We can prevent sexual harassment before it starts and protect workers when it happens. We can remove barriers so that all women are treated fairly and given an equal chance to succeed at work. And we can increase women’s power and influence in the workplace — and in other places, as well. The Big Idea Disclosure: TIME’S UP has received funding from Pivotal Ventures, the organization run by Melinda Gates, the author of this package’s first article.

Ending Harassment Culture

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