In the wake of the Harvey Weinstein case their has been a call for more women CEO’s in the entertainment industries. I’m not much of a feminist but I agree and feel this has been a long time coming. My feeling is women are much more caring about values and women will clean up the immoral sewer which is Hollywood. Granted my experience is pretty small but I do know a female biker bar ownerwho’s bar is definitely not as raunchy as other biker bars.
I’d like to ask you all, have you seen where the presence of a female boss has put a stop to a company where sexual harassment was common?
I’ve seen where lawsuits have made companies really change their culture and crack down on old practices. Though this has the odd side effect of making it tougher for attractive women to get jobs at these companies. Male bosses end up being afraid to hire a good looking young professional.
Considering how many companies have women employed as the head of HR, I’m not sure how much it matters there.
In manufacturing it appears most harassment was happening in Sales and Marketing. I would guess Woman VP of Sales would help a lot. But that is only a guess.
Its a stupid idea. The problematic part in the phrase “powerful men acting with impunity” is “impunity” not “men”. I have seen female bosses absolutely mistreat subordinates and not get called out because they were powerful and influential. In one case actively try and end one person’s marriage. I have also seen women protect abusive colleagues, the “old boys network” does not only include “old boys”.
Bringing in more women is not going to fix that. Having accountability and protections will.
Dunno about individual anecdotes, but this article documents some cases.
I have not seen a situation where a female boss put a stop sexual harassment in company where it was a common practice. I have seen several cases where female and male bosses prevented it from being imported into the company by making it very clear to male employees coming in from buy-outs and mergers that professional behavior would be expected of them at all times and there would be a zero-tolerance policy about harassers.
It’s certainly more common for a man to harass a woman, but the opposite happens too, and that’s hard to report also because the men aren’t willing to report it for being seen as ‘weak’ (which, incidentally, is one of the many reasons women don’t report either).
I don’t think it has to do with the gender of the person at the top. It has to do with their personality, their commitment to stamping out harassment, and their prevention of allowing middle management to form fiefdoms that harassment occurs in. That last is the bigger concern for me: I imagine most CEOs are far removed from most harassment, because it’s the manager in a remote office that only contacts corporate once a month that’s getting away with it. (Of course executives get away with it too, but that’s easier to blame on the CEO).
I’ve been in a company where sexual harassment was rampant, and one where it’s uncommon. The difference isn’t in whether males or females are in charge, it’s in policies and education. At the first company there was a policy that wasn’t enforced, and no education at all. Complaints were dealt with by moving the complainer to another unit. In my current company they have a zero tolerance policy that has been quite effective at deterrence. Only one firing and few complaints, and I observe around me that people treat each other with respect.
I have seen female managers mistreat subordinates. I have never seen sexual harassment that rises to what women face. I have never seen a woman condone an entire environment where all the women collude to make things unpleasant for all the men, and the boss is the worst of the lot. Mostly, you get a woman supervisor with a “plantation” mentality, who treats men and women (and employees of all races) equally as he serfs, if you will forgive my mixed metaphor.
You might even occasionally get one woman who harasses one man sexually, but usually on the downlow. She can’t brag about a conquest to other women in the company, because they’ll think she’s done something skeevy. If she’s the top boss, it might be common knowledge, but it makes her unpopular, although no less powerful. In fact, it demoralizes a lot of women, who don’t aspire to be her.
Experience is mostly from the military, and working in garages. I have otherwise worked in female dominated professions: interpreting, work with the disabled population, and work in preschools.
I will say one thing-- those girly posters you see in garages are not something the mechanics go out and buy. They are provided free by tool and part companies, and the bathing suit clad models are modeling the calendar’s brand of oil, or wrench, or tire, or what have you. One day, the boss came through and said to take them all down, and he provided a much better calendar as far as recording and displaying upcoming events, and everyone was perfectly happy with it. They all had magazines at home, and got tired of looking at the same cheesy calendar girls.
No, but I did witness a female boss sexually harass her very openly gay administrative assistant, not just verbally but inappropriate touching.
While woman my be less inclined to do these things that doesn’t mean they are immune. Harassment can be just as much about having power over other people as particular genders.
Alas one such recent example in my work history had a female boss who completely failed to deal with an employee who was sexually harassing and sexually assaulting other female members of staff. Instead the boss took punitive action against the female members of staff who raised complaints.
It did not help that the problem employee was the boss’ husband. Senior management was informed of the complaints and the conflict of interest. They did not satisfactorily resolve the complaints nor the conflict of interest.
Other female bosses have not had such qualms dealing appropriately with sexual harassment, just like the male bosses I have had.
I don’t believe that women are really any different or better than men.
Up until recently I worked at a place where sexual harassment and bullying was fairly common, from both sides.
One particular woman, a supervisor, ended up with about a dozen sexual harassment charges against her. One of them was filed by me. When the dust cleared she had a one-day suspension.
I know that if it had been a man with all those charges against him, he would have been fired.
Btw, this was a provincial government work site, unionized and with a number of posters up condemning harassment and bullying.
Both the union and the company wimped out.
The last few weeks have shown that many, many women have tales of sexual harassment that was ignored or covered up. I don’t think you can ve confident that a man would have been fired.
I worked in a unionized government location. The past few years the employer and the union have been on a huge push with anti-bullying and anti-harassment. Our work places were full of posters and leaflets as was the media.
At my location there was one man that was fired recently for bullying. I also had to testify against him, as did a number of others. It was a pretty clear-cut case and no one was surprised when he was fired.
When I testified against the woman, it was also a pretty clear-cut case of sexual harassment. There were times when she was propositioning guys in front of other employees. The entire work place was in shock when all she received was a one day suspension.
It pretty well made a mockery of everything the government and the union were publicly pushing for.
And if a guy had been as aggressive as she was, yes, he would have been out the door, permanently.
There have been a number of case in the media, usually in government work places, where men have been fired or received lengthy suspensions for harassment, but I have yet to see this happen to a woman.
Most of these cases were never reported to begin with.
There are cases where such reports were ignored and covered up. But those tend to be instances where the harasser is a big time rainmaker and crucial employee, e.g. the Fox people. Some ordinary shmo is going to be out the door before he knows what hit him.
I believe you about your personal experience, and that sucks, but I feel like there’s some confirmation bias going on in terms of what the media is reporting. I’m seeing a rash of very powerful men being called on a pattern of harrassment, but they exist because for years and years and years they’ve gotten away with it. There’s like this huge backlog.
Serious question–how would you know that? How would you know if women in your office had complained about “some ordinary shmo” and had that complaint blown off?
Well FWIW in my particular office I’m pretty confident that this holds. The PTB have a pretty low tolerance level for this sort of this. I can remember a couple of incidents. In one case, 3 people (2 men and one woman) were sacked (publically marched out of the office etc.) for sending inappropriate emails and the like (between each other, IIRC). And in another incident, a reasonably high-up guy (though on the local and not corporate level - big client guy IOW) was sacked after leaving a crude message on a woman’s VM following the company picnic. That doesn’t mean they would terminate everyone with no questions asked, but that’s not what we’re discussing. If on balance there were verified instances of harassment I’m 99.9% sure that any ordinary shmo is going to be sacked very quickly. Even an extraordinary shmo, most likely. (The nature of my company is that they don’t have people who are uniquely valuable in the way the Fox people or Harvey Weinstein were.)
But more broadly, my assessment is not based on just goings on at my particular company. It’s what you hear about and read about etc. in many many sources, which is in line with what I’ve described at my place.
Besides for a desire to avoid bad publicity, companies are terrified of being sued, and you have to be really really valuable for them to take that risk in the name of keeping you.
No. Thats not what’s been shown. What has been shown is that powerful people are able to avoid or mitigate the adverse consequences of thire actions. You think that he’d been Harvey Weinstein, an electrician on set, he would have been able to get away with it? He’d been thrown in prison at the first sign of ill-behavior.
I don’t know of the situation asked for in the OP. A large part of that reason is that women haven’t had as a many chances to take over or rise to the top in business as men. And if they’re going to rise to the top from within it’s less likely to happen in a company that tolerates sexual harassment.