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Sexual Harassment—What’s Changed Since the Hill/Thomas Hearings?

One thing that definitely hasn’t changed since Anita Hill accused Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment during the October 1991 hearings that confirmed his seat on the Supreme Court: Thomas is still trying to vindicate himself at Hill’s expense.

As Professor Hill points out today in an op-ed in the New York Times, Clarence Thomas, sitting today at the pinnacle of the nation’s legal chain of command, repeats the “unsubstantiated representations and outright smears” against her in his recently released memoir, which has been featured on such major media as “60 Minutes” over the weekend and “Nightline” last night. He has never really addressed her allegations, nor acknowledged the witnesses and investigative sources that have shown the assault on Anita Hill in 1991 to be groundless.

Every employee in the United States whose workplace has policies about a harassment-free environment owes a debt to Anita Hill.

Although she sought a confidential complaint channel, which wasn’t granted, she nonetheless had the courage to speak up about unfair treatment. She did so because she recognized that a propensity to abuse power is a character issue, not a personal idiosyncrasy. Professor Hill also understood the toll that the cumulative effect of subtle and not-so-subtle unwelcome attention has on our productivity and commitment to our workplaces as well as to our personal well-being.

Much has changed since she came forward: her nationally viewed testimony shone a spotlight on what was previously unspoken. Millions of employees began a dialogue about the boundary between appropriate and inappropriate behavior in the workplace. Discussions of implicit coercion and abuse of power, once confined to hushed tones in the Ladies Room, became legitimate topics for management training sessions. The Civil Rights Act of 1991 became law, allowing for punitive damages for various forms of workplace harassment and discrimination. Women ran for office in record numbers, outraged by how badly handled the Hill/Thomas hearings were by an all-male Senate Judiciary Committee.

Nevertheless, along with Professor Hill, countless women have discovered two key dynamics about sexual harassment: speaking up will subject the accuser to intense scrutiny and stereotyping, regardless of the merits of the claim; and the outcome will have more to do with the relative power of the accused and the accuser than the facts.

Much still remains to be done. Sixteen years after the hearings, most U.S. workplaces do not have safe, confidential, and effective problem-solving mechanisms to stop sexual harassment. Consequently most employees do not come forward—they fear they won’t be believed or will suffer retaliation or simply that nothing will be done.

For professionals and managers, even those with abundant evidence, coming forward is viewed as career suicide. Study after study for the past few decades confirms that more professionals and managers choose to quit than to file a complaint. When a senior manager is the accused, all too often he is treated sympathetically and soothed with accounts about the supposed ease of bringing a “false complaint.” Although the more blatant forms of unwanted sexual attention—the quid pro quo where a boss essentially tells an employee “sleep with me or you lose your job”—have decreased, more subtle forms persist. The incidence of unwanted sexual attention in the form of teasing, jokes, remarks or questions, remains at 11% annually for Caucasian women and 14% annually for women of color, according to the Level Playing Field Institute’s 2003 study, “How Fair.”

The Level Playing Field Institute, a San Francisco-based non-profit that I direct, recently completed “Corporate Leavers,” a groundbreaking study on professionals and managers who voluntarily leave their workplaces and why. Two million professionals and managers leave solely due to unfairness each year, costing companies a staggering $64 billion. Unwanted sexual attention is one of those forms, along with being subjected to offensive materials, being bullied, and being subjected to stereotyping.

In this study we heard stories that point to why change is still needed:

An African American sales professional was subjected to repeated, unwanted sexual advances from her co-worker. She did what everyone is now supposed to do: she reported this policy violation to her manager, who was also his manager. The manager asked her why she was being so emotional and told her to calm down. Another respondent’s story shows how a supervisor’s power in the workplace all too often determines the outcome. She reported to the company president and the human resources representative that one of her managers—who was rude and ineffectual—was downloading porn on his work computer. “They informed me they wouldn’t be doing anything about it because he was a large shareholder in the company.”

Ignoring such complaints adds real costs to a company’s bottom line: in addition to losing valuable employees, businesses also lose prospective employees and customers or clients. Seventy percent of those survey respondents who experienced unwanted sexual attention and left their jobs strongly discouraged others from seeking employment at their former workplace. Almost half (48%) of these respondents also strongly discouraged others from purchasing their previous employer’s products or services.

An Asian American woman attorney told us, “there were two male attorneys who blatantly were hitting on me (at the same time), in spite of my explicit expressions that I was not interested in them. I never felt bullied by their behavior, but it was very irritating and annoying to have to put up with. I would never recommend anyone to work for my previous employer.”

Despite the good that came to many out of Anita Hill’s ordeal, the final message may remain that denial and attacking the accuser is a strategy that will be rewarded. As Professor Hill points out in the New York Times today, “Our legal system will suffer if a sitting justice’s vitriolic pursuit of personal vindication discourages others from standing up for their rights.” The failure of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1991 to handle her complaint fairly and confidentially sent a message that just leaving might be the only realistic option. Women, fairness and business all suffer as a result.



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