Stopping Harassment and Creating Cultures of Respect with Gretchen Carlson and Robin Hammeal Urban

Our culture has tended, up until recently, to think of serious sexual harassment as characterizing a bygone era. Scenes from the television show Mad Men, for example, set in 1960s advertising firms, startle us with the blatant sexism that female characters face. A 2016 report by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on workplace harassment included the results of a random sample survey that found that 25% of female employees reported having been sexually harassed in the workplace. When the term "sexual harassment" was not used in the question, but unwanted sexual advances by employers were described, 40% of female employees reported having experienced these behaviors. When the question described people's being treated with hostility in relation to their gender (as opposed to experiencing unwanted sexual advances or sexual touching), that percentage went up to 60. This survey demonstrates, first, that sexual harassment in the American workplace is anything but dead, and second, that many women notice sexually inappropriate and gender-biased behavior in their workplaces but don't define these behaviors to themselves as sexual harassment. The harassment is happening, but victims don't always recognize it as such. The problem of sexual harassment is remarkably widespread across the culture. The same EEOC report indicates that sex-based harassment is reported equally in federal workplaces, state and local government workplaces, and private workplaces, so the problem is not relegated to certain types of employer. The #MeToo movement has shown that sexual harassment doesn't fall into neat ideological lines either. Starting with Gretchen Carlson, multiple women accused Roger Ailes, CEO of Fox News of sexual harassment before he resigned in 2016, but women have accused left-leaning politicians such as Al Franken and journalists such as NPR's Michael Orestes of harassment as well. Sexual harassment is not limited to an ideology, a type of person, a type of job, or even to a single gender. 17% of the sex-based harassment charges examined in the EEOC report were brought by men, and a 2017 study by the U.S. Civil Rights Commission indicated that 90% of transgender individuals -- male and female -- experience workplace harassment. Nor does harassment stop in the workplace. The sexual assault charges brought against numerous clergy members in recent years indicate that churches are no more immune to predatory sexual behavior than anywhere else. It is impossible to deny that sexual harassment remains a serious problem across the board in American culture.