Month: May 2019

Sexual Harassment in the Military: It’s Getting Worse for Women

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The American military has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in the last ten years in sexual harassment prevention and education, but the problem is getting worse for women. Dave Philipps of the New York Times reports several alarming statistics:

  • Sexual assaults in the military have increased by 50 percent in the last two years against women in uniform.
  • The Department of Defense’s Annual Report on Sexual Assault in the Military estimates 20,500 instances of “unwanted sexual contact” in 2018, based on a survey of women and men across all branches of the military.
  • Assaults on men remained flat while assaults on women recorded the biggest increase in years.
  • Women make up 20 percent of the military but are the targets of 63 percent of the assaults.
  • Active military personnel are experiencing more assaults, but despite significant increases in the availability of sexual assault specialists and victim advocates, they are less likely than before to report the assaults.
  • Philipps notes that a separate report in January 2019 showed that the number of sexual assaults at the service academies has also risen by 50 percent for women since 2016, showing that the problem is just as rampant among the military’s future leaders as for the current ones.

Representative Jackie Speier and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand are each leading two different concerted efforts to pass legislation that would create an independent prosecutor for sexual harassment cases in the military, but the military has lobbied against this legislation. Under the current system, only military commanders have the authority to determine whether an assault has occurred and to impose punishment. The commanders do not want to relinquish any of their authority. Even Senator Martha McSally, who came forward last year to reveal that she had been raped by a superior officer and suffered numerous other sexual assaults, opposes shifting authority over assault cases away from commanding officers. McSally even admits that she never reported her assaults for fear of retaliation.

The current system is not working. While the survey found that more assaults are occurring, fewer are being reported: fewer than 30 percent were reported in 2018, down from 32 percent in 2016. Philipps notes, “A large majority of victims do not trust the system” to handle the cases well or protect them from retaliation. Structural change is needed.

Please encourage your congressional representatives to support legislation that protects women in the military.

 

Photo by Jeffrey F Lin on Unsplash

Where Are the Women?

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As an adult woman, I am always looking for or tracking whether women are represented in different settings. I look at photos of national and world leaders and count the few faces of women in these groups. I go to art galleries and look for the works by women artists, often searching in vain. I notice lots of statues of military men on horses in public places and rarely see statues of women.

Children also notice the lack of female leaders and role models in public life. Elizabeth Renzetti of the Globe and Mail of Canada writes that after recent losses in national elections, for the first time in many years, Canada currently has no female premiers for any of its provinces. Renzetti cites research by Kate Graham, a political scientist at Western University, involving groups of five-year-old girls. When the girls were shown a group picture of Canada’s current premiers and asked if they noticed anything, they all did. “There’s only one girl,” the children responded. Only one of the premiers was a woman when this research was conducted before the recent election. Now there are none. The children noticed.

Renzetti notes that adults should also be concerned about the absence of women in Canada’s leadership for the following reasons:

  • Diversity promotes better decision-making when developing public policy.
  • Young women need to see themselves represented if they are to believe they can go into political life.
  • Women bring particular knowledge and life experience to policymaking that has implications for half of the population. Their perspective will be missing if they are not at the decision-making table.

On another note, Gail Collins of the New York Times writes that, at last, some statues that honor the accomplishments of women are being created by the City of New York, a city she describes as having a “wildly man-centric population of public monuments.” New York City has commissioned five new statues, one for each borough:

  • A statue will be placed in Manhattan to honor Elizabeth Jennings, a fearless twenty-four-year-old black woman who started the integration of the New York City transit system in 1854. Long before Rosa Parks, Jennings refused to leave a trolley car when told it was for whites only. Collins reports that Jennings clung to an open window frame crying “murder” when the conductor tried to pull her from the trolley. A police officer shoved her off the trolley onto the street, ruining her dress and bonnet. Her family filed suit against the street car company for discrimination and won. Several follow-up lawsuits later, segregation in the New York City transit system came to an end. A statue to Jennings will be placed next to Grand Central Station. It’s about time.
  • A statue to honor Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman to serve in Congress, will be placed in Brooklyn at the entrance to Prospect Park. It’s about time.
  • Billie Holiday, the great blues singer, will have a statue in Queens. It’s about time.
  • A statue of Helen Rodríguez Trías, a pioneer in treating families affected by HIV, will be placed in the Bronx. It’s about time.
  • Katherine Walker will be honored with a statue on Staten Island. A tiny widow, Walker ran a lighthouse alone outside of New York Harbor in the early 1900s until she was seventy-three. When boats would start to sink in rough waters, she would row to the rescue and is credited with saving at least fifty lives. It’s about time.

The absence of women in public roles and public spaces sends a strong message to girls that they do not belong. It’s time for us to send a different message.

 

Photo by Dean Hinnant on Unsplash

Men Know What Consent Is

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As I read and hear about continuous accusations of date rape on campuses and sexual assault by bosses—accusations that are usually denied vigorously by the men accused (and it is usually men)—I cannot help but wonder how people think that men do not know what consent is. As a survivor of sexual assault myself, I have no question in my mind that I did not give consent and that my attacker knew full well what he was doing. How can a person think that it is acceptable to use physical force to pin someone to a bed who is struggling to get up or to force someone’s head down to perform oral sex? This is not consent.

Because of these questions, I was interested to read an article by Peggy Orenstein, a well-known scholar on gender differences. Orenstein reports that she interviewed high school and college students over the past two years, most of who came across to her as “friendly, thoughtful, bright, engaging young men.” Many of these young men reported to her that they have “sort of” raped girls, have pushed women’s heads down to get oral sex, have taken a Snapchat video of a date performing oral sex on them and sent it to the baseball team—and yet see themselves as “good guys.” How can this be?

Orenstein cites the research of Nicole Bedera, a doctoral student at the University of Michigan who interviewed male college students in 2015. Bedera reports that each male student could articulate at least a basic understanding of consent: both parties wanted to be doing what they were doing. Many of the young men had a sophisticated understanding of refusal and consent. Most of these students also endorsed the standard of “yes means yes,” which requires “active, conscious, continuous and freely given agreement by all parties engaging in sexual activity.” Yet when asked about their own recent sexual activity, “even men who claimed to practice affirmative consent often had not.” When this conflict between their understanding and actions was pointed out to them by the researcher, they expanded their definition of consent rather than question their own conduct. In some cases, the researcher reports that the expanded definitions of consent became so elastic that they met the legal definition of assault. If they were aware that their sex partner had become upset by their behavior, some young men rationalized it, got angry with the woman involved, and blamed her for refusing them.

Orenstein cites another study conducted on 1,200 college students in 2016 by researchers at Confi, an online resource dedicated to women’s health. In this study, one in four men believed that women usually have to be “convinced” for sex to happen and the behavior of a “tipsy” guy was more acceptable than a sober one. These beliefs allow young men to let themselves off the hook if they are accused of assault.

Orenstein offers these conclusions:

  • Young men still too often learn to prioritize their pleasure over women’s feelings and interpret a partner’s behavior through the lens of their own wishes.
  • We need to fully educate boys not only about the importance of consensual, ethical, and mutually pleasurable sexuality but also the ways their own sense of entitlement may blind them to those values, leading them to cause harm.

We still have a long way to go to educate both boys and men.

 

Photo by Nik Shuliahin on Unsplash

Emerging Female Leadership

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Tina Brown, of the New York Times, writes that “a new paradigm of female leadership is emerging.” She notes these recent examples:

  • Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand responded immediately to the mass shooting of Muslim worshippers in Christchurch, New Zealand, by donning a hijab, or headscarf, in solidarity with her country’s Muslim citizens and passing legislation to ban the ownership and purchase of assault weapons in her country within one week of the shooting. Women all over New Zealand followed her example and wore headscarves. Brown notes that Ardern became “an iconic image of global humanity.”
  • Several countries, from Georgia to Ethiopia, have recently elected their first female presidents.
  • Women now lead in industries where previous leaders have been all men. For example:
    • Women have the top jobs at both the New York Stock Exchange and at Nasdaq.
    • Kathy Warden is now the CEO of Northrop Grumman.
    • Four out of five of the biggest defense companies in the United States are now headed by women.
    • Chicago just elected its first black female mayor.
  • Stacey Abrams, who narrowly lost the Georgia gubernatorial race and is a Democratic leading light, just rejected the idea of running for vice president by announcing, “You don’t run for second place.”
  • Forty-two new women were sworn into the United States Congress, bringing brilliance and passion.
  • Nancy Pelosi, mother of five and grandmother of nine, runs circles around the president and keeps her diverse and fractious House Democratic Caucus together and strategically focused.

Brown goes on to note that “women have accumulated rich ways of knowing that until recently were dismissed in male circles of power.” She reflects that as women step into new roles, that wisdom is emerging.

Michelle Cottle cautions us to not buy into stereotypes of women in politics as being more collaborative and less ambitious than men. She cites two resources: one is an article written by Jennifer Lawless, a professor at the University of Virginia and expert on women in politics, and the other is a study from the National Bureau of Economic Research. Both sources do not support the hypothesis that women are more willing to compromise in politics. Cottle notes that while women bring fresh perspectives and different priorities and work styles, it is dangerous to have unrealistic expectations of women. In fact, we sometimes need female leaders who can be tough, unyielding, ambitious, and compassionate, like Nancy Pelosi and Jacinda Ardern, to tackle the complex problems facing our world.

Let’s celebrate these examples of emerging female leaders.

 

Photo by CoWomen on Unsplash