TIME Magazine, Gender Inequity, and Why We Haven’t Seen the Last of Workplace Sexual Assault

TIME Magazine, Gender Inequity, and Why We Haven’t Seen the Last of Workplace Sexual Assault
This post was published on the now-closed HuffPost Contributor platform. Contributors control their own work and posted freely to our site. If you need to flag this entry as abusive, send us an email.

Few events were more impactful in 2017 than the sexual assault scandals that rocked several industries, including film, tech, and politics, and that continue to be raised by the brave men and women who endured them. As a result, the “Silence Breakers” became TIME Magazine’s Person of the Year and cover story, a symbol of the people who have had enough of this unfortunate status quo and are ready to change things.

The reactions have been mixed, to put it lightly. Our responses have been very telling of the underlying issues we have around sexual assault, consent, and the role of women in society. While anyone of any gender can experience sexual assault, abused women were overwhelmingly thrust into the spotlight this year, and often not positively. Their allegations spurred the usual questions: Are these women “coming after” powerful men in some sort of revenge, or to gain attention and fame? Did they bait these men into sexual advances? Are they really traumatized by these experiences, or just making a big deal out of something small? If you haven’t asked these questions yourself, you likely know someone who has. But having worked for years in a male-dominated industry in which these kinds of events are unfortunately commonplace, there are some things I know to be true:

I. The women on the cover of TIME Magazine got attention, but this does not mean they set out to accuse their abusers for attention.

It is completely possible for people to come forward with sexual assault allegations for dishonest reasons, but the kneejerk reaction to believe this could be the case with all incidents is not only dangerous—it’s not supported by the statistics. According to the many studies that have reviewed this issue, the proportion of sexual violence allegations that turn out to be false hovers between two and six percent, which is similar to other felonies, with only 40 percent of incidents ever being reported. In the workplaces of the United States and the UK, over 50 percent of women reported having experienced sexual harassment at some point in their careers. In 2014, 43 percent of women in Canada reported being sexually harassed at work—more than twice the rate of men. But as is immediately clear, these numbers don’t match the proportion of women who come forward by any stretch of imagination. That’s why the “silence breakers” are so remarkable—they are very, very few.

The TIME Magazine article revealed some reasons that women stay quiet regarding sexual harassment and assault, ranging from discomfort to shame to outright fear. Most of the women portrayed in the article did not go on to achieve some grand career success as a result of their coming forward. Up until this coverage, they were branded as whistle blowers, or worse, ignored. By and large, this is not the kind of attention women want at work, and the assumption that attention is the underlying motive for so many of them to claim #MeToo is deeply flawed.

II. A person does not need to lose everything in the process of coming forward in order for his or her claims to be legitimate.

Many of the women portrayed in the TIME article lost work, money, friends, and their reputations in the process of coming forward with sexual assault allegations. Some of them picked up the pieces and achieved significant success after they experienced assault, going on to create award-winning films and albums. The outpouring of mistrust and doubt for these women in particular was intense. The general reaction was that they did not deserve to be on the cover, or in the piece. They did not suffer enough to warrant the title of “Silence Breaker.” Or, as in the case of Taylor Swift, they did not break the silence enough. But deciding that there is a perfect or “right” way to expose sexual assault only serves to discourage others from coming forward if they are concerned they will not fit the mold. There simply is no correct or incorrect way to stand up to something so unjust. The fact that some of these women found a way to have flourishing careers and happy lives after their trauma is a hopeful message. It does not matter how or when or why they spoke, but that they did… and that is how we will encourage the silence breaking to continue.

III. We have not seen the last of workplace sexual assault, and we’re not going to (unless the entire system is changed).

As noted in the article, sexual harassment training has been administered in organizations for decades. The turmoil we’ve seen this year suggests that this isn’t effective, which reminds me of another kind of ineffective training we continue to administer to employees: diversity training. As business leaders, we refuse to believe that violations of either of these significant workforce issues are happening in our house, but the statistics suggest they probably are. This means that despite our zero tolerance policies, we are somehow supporting a system that allows these things to happen. We cannot preach to leaders that the personal boundaries of women should be respected in the workplace while also continuing to support processes that ensure they are paid less, promoted less frequently, and less valued as contributors. This is not to suggest that a woman being overlooked for a well-deserved promotion is as violating as being touched inappropriately—the two experiences are absolutely not equal. But they happen in part because of the same underlying issue: the voices of women are quieter, less important, and more dispensable than those of men. I am delighted to see that these voices will be quiet no more, and I hope this is a trend that continues. But it is only when we address these other underlying perceptions—that the voices of women are less important to the success of our businesses—that we will truly eradicate the pervasive incidents of workplace sexual assault and destroy perceptions that this is a small, misguided issue to be swept under the rug.

Popular in the Community

Close

What's Hot