{"id":1284,"date":"2017-07-31T08:00:39","date_gmt":"2017-07-31T12:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/annelitwin.com\/?p=1284"},"modified":"2017-07-31T08:00:39","modified_gmt":"2017-07-31T12:00:39","slug":"sexual-harassment-coming-end-good-news-bad-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/blog-posts\/sexual-harassment-coming-end-good-news-bad-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Sexual Harassment Coming to an End? Good News and Bad News"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\t<![CDATA[<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-1286\" src=\"http:\/\/annelitwin.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/Is-Sexual-Harassment-Coming-to-an-End-Good-News-and-Bad-News-300x199.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"199\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/Is-Sexual-Harassment-Coming-to-an-End-Good-News-and-Bad-News-300x199.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/Is-Sexual-Harassment-Coming-to-an-End-Good-News-and-Bad-News.jpg 640w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>First, the good news: dozens of women have been speaking out about sexual harassment in the workplace in recent months, bringing their upsetting experiences into the light and out of the shadows after a long period of silence about this issue in organizations. Understandably, women have been coming forward slowly either because of pressure to stay silent or justifiable fear of negative consequences to their careers. Gretchen Carlson spoke out at Fox News and brought about the firing of Roger Ailes and Bill O\u2019Reilly, and other women gained courage from her example to tell their stories of sexual harassment at Fox.\nMike Isaac of the <em>New York Times<\/em> reports that \u201cin February, the former Uber engineer Susan Fowler wrote a public blog post detailing what she said was a history of sexual harassment at Uber. That plunged Uber into crisis\u201d and emboldened dozens of other women to come forward about the pervasive \u201cbro culture\u201d at technology firms.\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bostonglobe.com\/business\/2017\/07\/06\/tide-turning-women-expose-bro-culture\/NSxv2bsXEto1f0TYlBpWxN\/story.html\">Shirley Leung<\/a> of the <em>Boston Globe<\/em>\u00a0 notes that while most women have not spoken out publicly because of fear of losing opportunities for jobs or startup funding, those who have are making an impact. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/07\/03\/technology\/silicon-valley-sexual-harassment.html\">Katie Benner<\/a> of the <em>New York Times<\/em> \u00a0describes some of the results:\n\n\n<ul>\n \t\n\n<li>Dave McClure, founder of the startup incubator 500 StartUps, resigned after admitting to an accusation of sexual harassment. The company also had covered up an earlier sexual harassment charge against him when \u201cthe investigation was kept confidential.\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n \t\n\n<li>Binary Capital imploded due to sexual harassment charges lodged against Justin Caldbeck by several women.<\/li>\n\n\n \t\n\n<li>Uber CEO Travis Kalanick resigned.<\/li>\n\n\n \t\n\n<li>The New England Venture Capital Association invited members to sign a pledge of good behavior.<\/li>\n\n\n<\/ul>\n\n\nNow for the bad news: the voluntary signing of a good-behavior pledge is not likely to change much. While I agree with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/06\/30\/technology\/women-entrepreneurs-speak-out-sexual-harassment.html\">Katie Benner<\/a> that \u201coften change happens only when there is public revelation,\u201d I don\u2019t think that public revelation is enough to stop sexual harassment. I agree with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/06\/21\/technology\/uber-start-up-lessons.html?_r=0\">Farhad Manjoo<\/a> that sexual harassment is systemic, pervasive, and ingrained in many organizational cultures. Sexual harassment is systemic because\n\n\n<ul>\n \t\n\n<li>Organizational leaders ignore complaints or sweep them under the rug<\/li>\n\n\n \t\n\n<li>Lack of transparency is built into employment contracts with arbitration clauses that rarely favor complainants<\/li>\n\n\n \t\n\n<li>Lack of transparency is built into nondisclosure agreements required for settlements when sexual harassment claims are found to have merit<\/li>\n\n\n \t\n\n<li>Abusive organizational cultures are enabled by a failure of oversight by boards and investors<\/li>\n\n\n<\/ul>\n\n\nThe fact that a few dozen women have spoken out and a handful of high profile CEOs and investors have been dismissed does not mean that anything has changed. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/07\/03\/technology\/silicon-valley-sexual-harassment.html\">Katie Benner<\/a> notes that \u201csome venture capital firms [the sites of a lot of sexual harassment] are privately grumbling about having to deal with the issue.\u201d She quotes Aileen Lee, a founder of Cowboy Ventures, as saying, \u201cThey\u2019re asking when people will stop being outed.\u201d\nAs I have written in previous articles, steps can be taken to <em>really<\/em> change organizational cultures to be more hospitable to women:\n\n\n<ul>\n \t\n\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/annelitwin.com\/can-stop-sexual-harassment-workplace\/\">How We Can Stop Sexual Harassment in the Workplace<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n \t\n\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/annelitwin.com\/sexual-harassment-and-the-culture-of-masculinity-at-fox-news-uber-and-in-society\/\">Sexual Harassment and the Culture of Masculinity at Fox News, Uber, and in Society<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n \t\n\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/annelitwin.com\/why-sexual-harassment-is-still-happening-in-the-workplace\/\">Why Sexual Harassment Is Still Happening in the Workplace<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<\/ul>\n\n\nIn the meantime, thank you to the women who have come forward publicly to put this important issue back into the spotlight. And thank you to the trustees of Uber who forced the founder to step down for a wide range of bad behavior, including sexual harassment at his company.\n&nbsp;\nImage courtesy of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/usembassyjakarta\/8229348238\/\">US Embassy, Jakarta<\/a>. <a href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nd\/2.0\/\">CC by-nd 2.0<\/a>]]>\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\t<![CDATA[]]>\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[219,225,339,371,526,612,634],"class_list":["post-1284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog-posts","tag-fox-news","tag-gender","tag-leadership","tag-masculinity","tag-sexual-harassment","tag-women","tag-workplace"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1284"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1284\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}