Since assuming office on June 29, 2018, Doug Ford’s administration has made one decision after another which has hit victims of sexual assault, sexual harassment and vulnerable women in abusive relationships and lower-income jobs, the hardest. They also show an unsettling anti-#MeToo bias that places all women at risk — on the campus, in the community and in the workplace. Continue reading
Elizabeth Renzetti writes about the problems for women in coming forward. It is a welcome recognition of a serious, and all too underreported, reality of the #MeToo era. As we observed recently:
The same lack of respect for victims and the inept, often ill-intentioned, handling of these matters that causes women to abandon their complaints, or not report wrongdoing at all, is occurring in the public sector, in government agencies, in banks and throughout the workplace even in 2018. Poised on their cloud of Hollywood-inspired #MeToo myths, and too distant from the everyday world of most women, the surprising fact is the media haven’t picked up on that story. When they do, that will be the next wave of #MeToo shockers.
The wall of disbelief, disrespect and outright hostility that women encounter when they finally find the courage to seek healing leaves too many victims regretting that they ever came forward. This has been the experience of a shocking number who have reached out to The ZeroNow Campaign™ to share their nightmares of re-victimization. I know what it is like because I am one of them. The world needs to know about these stories, too.
“Thursday will mark one year since Matt Lauer was fired from NBC’s “Today” show for sexual misconduct. But since that reckoning, has NBC News really changed?
The culture and management of NBC News continue to silence women, while parent company Comcast apparently does nothing. It is time to hold the Comcast Board of Directors accountable.
NBC News may have conducted a limited “culture review,” but I continue to hear from women working there that harassment still goes unpunished, that they still face intimidation, and that they still fear for their careers if they complain.”
Linda Vester, both as a victim and an advocate, speaks out. It is yet another instructive case study in how little things have changed in many organizations in the U.S., and especially, in Canada, where the pressure from #MeToo has been more muted as a result of a less probing media and the absence of investigative journalists like Ronan Farrow and Jodi Kantor.
“We found that the Canadian Armed Forces did not always resolve reported cases of inappropriate sexual behaviour in a timely, consistent, and respectful manner.
As a result, some victims did not report or they withdrew their complaints, and they had less confidence that the investigations would produce any tangible results.”
“In addition to the psychological trauma, such outcomes can only reduce victims’ confidence in the system and contribute to the belief that there are negative consequences for those who report inappropriate sexual behaviour.”
What is most striking about this report is that these same realities are not isolated to the military. The same lack of respect for victims and the inept, often ill-intentioned, handling of these matters that causes women to abandon their complaints, or not report wrongdoing at all, is occurring in the public sector, in government agencies, in banks and throughout the workplace even in 2018. Poised on their cloud of Hollywood-inspired #MeToo myths, and too distant from the everyday world of most women, the surprising fact is the media haven’t picked up on that story. When they do, that will be the next wave of #MeToo shockers.
News from Forbes:
A recent study by Lean In and McKinsey, “Women In The Workplace” says that despite the #MeToo movement, women are not feeling confident that their claims about sexual harassment will be taken seriously. The study shows that 30% of women are skeptical that the changes taking place around sexual harassment policies and programs are effective, and women are twice as likely as men to say that it would be risky or pointless to report an incident.
These figures reflect a sharply lower representation of the reality of the everyday workplace. The women from which the above figure was drawn were full-time employees in the corporate workplace. There was no representation from the public sector or service sector, such as retailing and bars/restaurants, where the incidence of sexual misconduct has been traditionally greater than in the corporate sector. Also unreported were the opinions and experiences of part-time employees in low skilled/lower paying jobs such as office/home cleaning.
All of which means that if women saw how women are actually being treated in the everyday workplace, and especially when they come forward to report abuse, even at this period of heightened #MeToo awareness, they would be expressing a lot more than skepticism. They would be following the advice of Canadian suffragette trailblazer Nellie McLung about how real change is made:
Kathleen Finlay’s Op-Ed in The Times Colonist.
A version of this article, also published in The Huffington Post with links, is available here.
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(The Hill Times)