Speaker 1: In the early nineties, there weren't Twitter hashtags, so there
Speaker 1: was no hashtag me to campaign, but there was a
Speaker 1: flood of pink buttons on women's lapels that read I
Speaker 1: believe Anita Hill. This isn't the first time sexual harassment
Speaker 1: has been at the center of public conversation. This week
Speaker 1: we hear from Anita Hill, this is game Plan. Hi.
Speaker 1: I'm Francesca Levi and I'm Rebecca Greenfield. Since our episode
Speaker 1: a few weeks ago about workplace sexual harassment, even more
Speaker 1: stories have continued to come out. More people are making
Speaker 1: accusations against powerful men in all kinds of industries, and
Speaker 1: it really seems like women and men are gaining the
Speaker 1: courage to speak up about this. Just from the sheer
Speaker 1: number of people who have come out and kind of
Speaker 1: called out this behavior as wrong and inappropriate and illegal.
Speaker 1: It really does feel like a moment, and it's not
Speaker 1: just the amount of people coming forward, but stuff is
Speaker 1: actually happening, and that that seems new to me, that
Speaker 1: you can speak up and someone will actually get fired
Speaker 1: a powerful person for their behavior. It is a moment
Speaker 1: where something feels really different. But this isn't the first
Speaker 1: time in history that something has felt really different about
Speaker 1: the way we treat sexual harassment. Of course, the entire
Speaker 1: Anita Hill episode in the early nineties showed us that
Speaker 1: sexual harassment was not only something that women had to
Speaker 1: suffer in silence, but a real actionable offense, and it
Speaker 1: was on the lips of many people for the first time.
Speaker 1: And Anita Hill is somebody who I think is uniquely
Speaker 1: positioned to show us how far we still have to go,
Speaker 1: because she's seen how far we've come from the way
Speaker 1: that we once talked about sexual harassment to now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: of course I know about Anita Hill. She comes up
Speaker 1: a lot am I reporting, And I know the basic
Speaker 1: story that she had worked for Clarence Thomas Um when
Speaker 1: she was at the e O C. And she testified
Speaker 1: in front of this and a judiciary committee that he
Speaker 1: had sexually harassed her when he was being confirmed for
Speaker 1: Supreme Court Justice. We know he got confirmed, and I
Speaker 1: know it was a big deal, But I was a
Speaker 1: baby when this happened, so I don't I didn't actually
Speaker 1: know how big of a deal in a movement that
Speaker 1: it was. Yeah, I was also a child when this happened,
Speaker 1: although I do have a memory of it because it
Speaker 1: was such a big deal, and it was on the
Speaker 1: news all the time, and I think that there's a
Speaker 1: huge swath of the working world that this isn't in
Speaker 1: living memory for them. Um. But from what I vaguely
Speaker 1: remember and also what I've read, I know that sexual
Speaker 1: harassment wasn't even a term people really used in any
Speaker 1: kind of regular way, and there was a big debate
Speaker 1: over whether or not Anita Hill was telling the truth.
Speaker 1: Her credibility was smeared. People had all kinds of reasons
Speaker 1: for saying that she wasn't telling the truth. And then
Speaker 1: of course there were those women and men wearing the
Speaker 1: I believe we need to help pins who who were
Speaker 1: coming out on the record to say they did believe her.
Speaker 1: But that was the central question, was whether or not
Speaker 1: she was telling the truth. And it was really the
Speaker 1: first time that even companies started developing policies around sexual harassment.
Speaker 1: We knew this kind of thing happened, but there wasn't
Speaker 1: a word for it, and there wasn't really a way
Speaker 1: to talk about it that everybody kind of agreed on.
Speaker 1: It's interesting to see the different memes that have come out,
Speaker 1: Like back in the nine Views, it was I believe
Speaker 1: her and now it's me too, which I know now
Speaker 1: a lot of women don't get believed still, but it
Speaker 1: does seem like a shift in the way we're talking
Speaker 1: about the victims of harassment. Instead of people saying we
Speaker 1: need to believe these people enough people feel empowered to
Speaker 1: talk about it. They don't think they're not going to
Speaker 1: be believed. Everyone's posting me too, and people are believing them.
Speaker 1: Of course, the fact that there are this many handles
Speaker 1: and there are still this many stories shows that not
Speaker 1: enough has changed since the time of Anita Hill. Our
Speaker 1: editor in chief John michaels Waite interviewed Anita Hill as
Speaker 1: part of Bloomberg's Year Ahead Summit, and we think that
Speaker 1: interview is really informative as to what actually has changed
Speaker 1: in the law and in culture and what still hasn't changed.
Speaker 1: So we're going to hear that interview now, press a. Hill,
Speaker 1: thank you very much for for coming coming to the
Speaker 1: Year Ahead. Um, I'm going to cut straight to the
Speaker 1: chase rather quickly. Despite your impressive record at brandeis. We're
Speaker 1: going to talk quite a lot about sexual harassment. And
Speaker 1: my starting question is I was actually in Los Angeles
Speaker 1: living on the outskirts of Hollywood that we have the
Speaker 1: Senate Judiciary hearings. I remember a lot of people walking
Speaker 1: around with badges. I believe, believing in you. And back then,
Speaker 1: a lot of people thought the whole debate about harassment
Speaker 1: would change and that we wouldn't be living through what
Speaker 1: we are now. Looking at what's happened with Harvey Weinstein
Speaker 1: and this new storm about this subject, do you think
Speaker 1: this time it will change in a different way. It's
Speaker 1: like any movement, like any energy, it develops and then
Speaker 1: you move forward and then there's a plateau. And I
Speaker 1: think that's what happened. But I don't think we should
Speaker 1: underestimate what happened either, because there was significant change. There
Speaker 1: were a new civil rights law that had had been
Speaker 1: doomed UM that was passed almost within weeks of the hearing.
Speaker 1: The number of complaints to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
Speaker 1: sexual harassment complaints double within two years of the hearing. UM. Actually,
Speaker 1: businesses started to put into place policies and procedures UM,
Speaker 1: and before the hearings maybe there would have been I
Speaker 1: think around ten of companies might have put policies in
Speaker 1: place to investigate sexual harassment UM. Afterwards of business instant
Speaker 1: and at this point now it's steadily increasing because of
Speaker 1: the case law, and we're now up to around ninety
Speaker 1: percent of companies, maybe even over ninety percent of companies
Speaker 1: have some kind of policy in place. So there has
Speaker 1: been progress, it has plateaued, and clearly if you read
Speaker 1: anything in the papers in the past few weeks, you
Speaker 1: know that there has not been enough progress. So the
Speaker 1: question is where do we go from here? What? What?
Speaker 1: What makes the difference? Now? Do you think the business
Speaker 1: now sees this as a serious threat to the bottom line?
Speaker 1: Is that? Is that really the bit which makes the
Speaker 1: difference is where business thinks of this as something that
Speaker 1: you could really have an impact on profits. It is
Speaker 1: costly sexual harassment complaints that if you prevail, if you
Speaker 1: look at the season numbers, uh, they cost millions of
Speaker 1: dollars to companies every year. UM. But I do think
Speaker 1: that part of the motivation comes from the case law.
Speaker 1: There's been a development of case law, maybe ten to
Speaker 1: fifteen cases decided by the Supreme Court UM. And I
Speaker 1: think there is uh, there's a movement inside companies. Some
Speaker 1: companies really do want to do the right things. Sometimes
Speaker 1: it's because people have complained and they want to force
Speaker 1: companies to do the right thing by their employees. They
Speaker 1: see that, you know, there's employees are suffering that there
Speaker 1: is not only lost and revenue, but lost in talent
Speaker 1: that can occur because of sexual harassment. Can we appze
Speaker 1: you a bision to structure? I mean I structural changes
Speaker 1: things we might need to do with the law to
Speaker 1: pushes ahead, and then cultural change, which it's harder, but
Speaker 1: often culture tends to follow structure. Do you do you
Speaker 1: think there are changes in the law that still need
Speaker 1: to be made that would make a difference in this field. Oh? Absolutely,
Speaker 1: you're you're right. I can talk all day about policies
Speaker 1: and procedures, but I have colleagues who study what is
Speaker 1: actually going on on the ground, and they tell me
Speaker 1: that most many of the policies that are in place
Speaker 1: really don't eliminate the problem out. And that is in
Speaker 1: part where culture comes in. Because you can have all
Speaker 1: the policies that you want, and they can even be
Speaker 1: good policies, if the culture doesn't support them, no one
Speaker 1: takes the policy seriously. They don't have to, and so
Speaker 1: there is sort of it's hard to separate culture from policy.
Speaker 1: It's almost impossible. Culture drives policy sometimes and then sometimes
Speaker 1: policy draw lives the implementation and the enforcement or excuse me,
Speaker 1: culture will drive the things on the law we could
Speaker 1: do that would make a difference in terms of changing
Speaker 1: the law. Well, the laws as another external structure. And
Speaker 1: I was secondly about internal structures and culture. Uh, there
Speaker 1: is the external culture and structures. I think that I
Speaker 1: can push us forward too. I do believe that many
Speaker 1: of the policies that have been put in place came
Speaker 1: about because of those legal decisions that I talked about.
Speaker 1: But there are some limits in very recently in advanced
Speaker 1: case and I believe it's in two thousand thirteen decision
Speaker 1: where the court UH gave a very limited definition of
Speaker 1: what is a supervisor in terms of employee or liability.
Speaker 1: And so the court decided that a supervisor, if a
Speaker 1: supervisor harasses, then their strict liability on the part of
Speaker 1: the corporation. But then and define what is the supervisor.
Speaker 1: What the court said was it had the supervisor had
Speaker 1: to be someone who had complete control over the employee. UH.
Speaker 1: The supervisor had to have the ability to hire, fire, demote,
Speaker 1: punish all and and even relocate the employee. And as
Speaker 1: we know in most operations, especially when you get down
Speaker 1: to lower level employment areas, supervisors may give work assignments,
Speaker 1: which in essence is a control over the employee, but
Speaker 1: they may not have the power to hire and fire
Speaker 1: That may be may come up at a higher level.
Speaker 1: And so that very limited definition of what is the
Speaker 1: supervisor not only doesn't match many work situations. In addition,
Speaker 1: it doesn't help many employees whose quote unquote supervisor or
Speaker 1: day to day manager is giving them a hard time.
Speaker 1: They may be harassed seeing them directlyly, they may be
Speaker 1: allowing other employees to harass. But what the court said
Speaker 1: advance was that unless you can hire and fire, you
Speaker 1: are not the company is not liable for your behavior.
Speaker 1: And is that something Congress could change or is it
Speaker 1: something you have to do state by state. It's something
Speaker 1: that Congress can change. But I think one of the
Speaker 1: things that I'd like to get people to think about
Speaker 1: is that what the law is to me is a floor.
Speaker 1: It's not a ceiling. You a corporation could say, for
Speaker 1: our purposes, supervisor is anyone who has control over the
Speaker 1: daily employment of an individual, at least for purposes of
Speaker 1: harassment and other kinds of workplace violations that they see
Speaker 1: or are part of. And so I think we you know,
Speaker 1: the law can push us in the right direction. And
Speaker 1: I think the law in this case is wrong and
Speaker 1: we should be taking a different direction. But I would
Speaker 1: like to think if a company is absolutely certain that
Speaker 1: women and girls and and all employees have a right
Speaker 1: to work in a place free of harassment, then they're
Speaker 1: going to be looking beyond the strict contours of the
Speaker 1: law to make up rules and regulations that best fit
Speaker 1: the values and the needs of a company. Now do
Speaker 1: you think that will require a new kind of imaginative
Speaker 1: way of thinking. I suppose we're now moving into the
Speaker 1: kind of cultural field away from the law. But talking
Speaker 1: earlier technology, are the things that we can do using
Speaker 1: that that companies could now use to to see or
Speaker 1: to measure I suppose that the harassment. I think there
Speaker 1: are all kinds of ways. I will say, though, we
Speaker 1: were talking about external factors, and one of the things
Speaker 1: that has happened over the past few years, and I
Speaker 1: think people have if you've been reading the papers, then
Speaker 1: you might have taken note out since and and even
Speaker 1: in the years after. So one of the first questions
Speaker 1: that I was always asked, whether it's by media or
Speaker 1: people on the street, or why don't women complain? And
Speaker 1: I think we have moved beyond that in this latest
Speaker 1: round of stories, and we're looking at what is the
Speaker 1: behavior and how are our systems and structures and are enablers? Uh?
Speaker 1: And individuals and who keep it occurring or support it
Speaker 1: knowingly or unknowingly. How are all of these things keeping
Speaker 1: this behavior going? Uh? And so I think we have
Speaker 1: moved to a different conversation and I would hope that
Speaker 1: that is what drives the inquiry now as opposed to
Speaker 1: you know, we have to start with something before we
Speaker 1: develop the tactics. We have to figure out what our
Speaker 1: motivation is. And the motivation you think should be very
Speaker 1: clearly is not just to follow the law, but to
Speaker 1: get much broader than that and set up a culture
Speaker 1: where people immediately I don't do this to be where
Speaker 1: there was even the slightest hint of it, it is
Speaker 1: it is dealt with. And I think that the setting
Speaker 1: of the culture has always been difficult because I think
Speaker 1: most places are risk averse and they are assuming that
Speaker 1: maybe if if we don't look into these you know,
Speaker 1: sort of look underneath the rugs and inside the desk stowers.
Speaker 1: This won't won't happen in our company. But if you
Speaker 1: look at the number of women who have participated in
Speaker 1: the me too hashtag and just people who have spoken out,
Speaker 1: we know that this continues to be a serious problem.
Speaker 1: And it seems to me that it's just a matter
Speaker 1: of time before something happens in just about any company
Speaker 1: if you haven't examined. So I think the motivation now
Speaker 1: is strong to be proactive because you can get media
Speaker 1: attention that will not be good not only for your business,
Speaker 1: but also for businesses reputation if the light it shines on.
Speaker 1: If you look at Uber, if you look at Fox News,
Speaker 1: if you look at Google. Even at this point, all
Speaker 1: of these companies are now being scrutinized because of stories
Speaker 1: that have come out. And so I think we are
Speaker 1: at a point now where it is in everyone's interest
Speaker 1: to try to be proactive, and we need to look
Speaker 1: at some kind of traditional approaches to being proactive, and
Speaker 1: one is look at your companies, make assessments. Um It's
Speaker 1: it seems to me that people say, well, oh, we
Speaker 1: haven't ever had a sexual harassment complaint, Does that in
Speaker 1: fact mean that there is no sexual harassment in your company,
Speaker 1: I would I would be very skeptical of reaching that conclusion. Um,
Speaker 1: so do something you need to cool in outsiders to
Speaker 1: come and do those things. I think at some point
Speaker 1: you you should. And I think one of the things
Speaker 1: that triggers the need for outside investigation is, in fact,
Speaker 1: if you hear of people who are very high profile,
Speaker 1: high performers, very instrumental either in the founding of a
Speaker 1: company like Harving Lines, or very instrumental in the revenues
Speaker 1: of a company, that you should in fact bring in
Speaker 1: outside people to to make an assessment. In that way,
Speaker 1: the investigations have integrity. You can you because you have
Speaker 1: a truly independent outside investigation. But you know, we should
Speaker 1: be using the same kind of technology that you used
Speaker 1: to improve your businesses in other ways, should be engaged
Speaker 1: in um and improving the workplace, in the workplace culture
Speaker 1: for everyone. Why do you think the boundary lies between
Speaker 1: this desire to to pre pre to prevent on the
Speaker 1: one side, and then the other thing, that sort of
Speaker 1: right to privacy that that line Hobby Weinstein seems to
Speaker 1: move that line a little bit the cost of privacy
Speaker 1: maybe or do you how do you feel about that well,
Speaker 1: And I think that's where the assessment has to be,
Speaker 1: at least initially aimed at the culture, because when the privacy, privacy, privacy,
Speaker 1: Now I'm saying privacy, the privacy problemish, it's just like that, Um,
Speaker 1: the privacy problem really occurs when you're looking in investigating individuals,
Speaker 1: and but when you're investigating the entire company, what is
Speaker 1: the climate life? What is the culture like for people?
Speaker 1: Do our women have you serve as your employees? Are
Speaker 1: they saying harassment is a problem here, even though they're
Speaker 1: not filing complaints, and that that would but that would
Speaker 1: surely to justify the or to to work in the
Speaker 1: system you're describing, you would go to an outside firm
Speaker 1: and say, will you survey all our women employees? Right?
Speaker 1: And the surveys they have to be have to be
Speaker 1: prior anonymous. Yeah, they have to be anonymous. But at
Speaker 1: the same time, what they might yield is that there
Speaker 1: are culprits. I think though, once you start investigating a culture,
Speaker 1: you might find that there are a certain individuals who
Speaker 1: are offenders or maybe repeat offenders, and then you have
Speaker 1: to decide what you're going to do about it. In
Speaker 1: terms of the outside climate. You you, we talked about,
Speaker 1: you mentioned the media, you, we talked about the pressure
Speaker 1: of the law. I mean, one great obvious difference now
Speaker 1: compared with what that is. We now have Donald Trump
Speaker 1: as president. To what extent does he make it harder
Speaker 1: to deal with the issue of sexual arrestment. I assume
Speaker 1: that people vote for Donald Trump for a number of reasons.
Speaker 1: But what I also assume is that we all have
Speaker 1: an opportunity now to look at his language and to
Speaker 1: analyze his language in a reason fashion. And what is
Speaker 1: deeply troubling about his language was not only the normalizing
Speaker 1: of this predatory behavior, but was the sense of his
Speaker 1: entitlement to behave in a certain way. And I think
Speaker 1: that's one of the real flags that if you have
Speaker 1: an individual who feels, whether it's the President of the
Speaker 1: United States or somebody in your organization, who feels entitled
Speaker 1: to do whatever they want to whoever they want because
Speaker 1: they're in that position of power, then that is your
Speaker 1: red flag and something that you should all be pushing
Speaker 1: back against because it won't just begin and in with
Speaker 1: sexual harassment. It will be all kinds of behavior that
Speaker 1: can be bullying, that can be other forms of discrimination,
Speaker 1: racial discrimination, homophobia in the wordplay, and that's something that
Speaker 1: you want to You won't find a question what would
Speaker 1: be this is about the year ahead two thousand and eighteen.
Speaker 1: What would be a reasonable kind of metric to measure
Speaker 1: us measure things by which you could say, look, it
Speaker 1: has got better because of X. What? What is what
Speaker 1: is the sign that you would like to see that
Speaker 1: would mean that something really has changed? Well, first of all,
Speaker 1: if you're doing the surveys, are two things that can happen.
Speaker 1: You can take the survey now and then taken months later.
Speaker 1: Are you feeling safe? Do you feel that this is
Speaker 1: harassment free? That you feel that you're moving forward not harassment?
Speaker 1: I think the other metric, and this is one that
Speaker 1: I talked about, is a change in leadership. Have you
Speaker 1: really examined the kinds of culture that you want and
Speaker 1: realize that in order to get that culture, you need
Speaker 1: to diversify your leadership, in your management, in your company.
Speaker 1: And I really believe that, um, yeah, and in companies
Speaker 1: that have actually address this problem. Uh, there's some research
Speaker 1: that chose that over a year or two leadership changes
Speaker 1: that you get more diversity and leadership more diversity in
Speaker 1: terms of women moving into leadership roles, more adversity in
Speaker 1: terms of people of color. Once you make a commitment
Speaker 1: to making sure that people are treated equally and fairly
Speaker 1: and in your workplaces, that's the Hill thank you very much.
Speaker 1: Basically to other thank yeah. I think it's really useful
Speaker 1: to hear from someone like Anita Hill because she has
Speaker 1: this long view that can make you see how these
Speaker 1: moments can affect change. Even though she did say that
Speaker 1: it will plateau. But even hearing that before her testimony,
Speaker 1: nobody had sexual arrest policies and now companies do. It's
Speaker 1: things like that that make the moment right now feel
Speaker 1: a lot less defeatist, like, yeah, we're outing sexual harassers,
Speaker 1: but how can we really make the workplace better? And
Speaker 1: she gave some actual solutions for that. She did keep
Speaker 1: hitting on that theme of external versus internally imposed changes,
Speaker 1: or kind of structural versus cultural, and the structural stuff is,
Speaker 1: you know, those policies and the laws, and she talked
Speaker 1: about how all that has changed, but she also kind
Speaker 1: of made it sound like she is seeing something of
Speaker 1: a cultural shift too. I liked that she mentioned, you know,
Speaker 1: we're not necessarily having the conversation about why don't morrow
Speaker 1: women speak up? Because so many women are speaking up now.
Speaker 1: Now we're having this conversation about why is this behavior
Speaker 1: happening and and what structures are enabling it? And I
Speaker 1: agree with you there is a defeatism and a sort
Speaker 1: of sadness, and hearing all this stuff, it feels very repetitive.
Speaker 1: But I'm encouraged by how different things actually are now
Speaker 1: than they were in a way I didn't even really
Speaker 1: fully grasp until I listened to this interview. And on
Speaker 1: a lighter note, let's do some half big takes, happy
Speaker 1: fake takes. If you have a half big take, you
Speaker 1: can call our voicemail. It's two on two six one
Speaker 1: zero one Becca. What's your half big take this week?
Speaker 1: My half big take is winter Fridays. Okay, I know
Speaker 1: we have a half big take for every day of
Speaker 1: the week, so here we go. Um. I just think
Speaker 1: that it's way better to get out of work early
Speaker 1: on those dark winter Fridays, or it's just as good
Speaker 1: as a summer Friday. We need it. It's so dark,
Speaker 1: gets dark so early, no one's doing any work, like,
Speaker 1: let us go so depressing. Not every company even has
Speaker 1: a summer Friday policy. But even when they don't, I
Speaker 1: feel like they're is just like an accepted sense on
Speaker 1: Friday afternoons in the summer that nobody's really getting any
Speaker 1: work done early, saying all the time, should we not
Speaker 1: should we just not work on Fridays? Like I think
Speaker 1: we should work on Fridays, but I do think people
Speaker 1: should get out early, but just we should accept that
Speaker 1: the second half of every Friday all throughout the year
Speaker 1: is garbage. But especially after the time change, particularly, we
Speaker 1: should get some I feel like we should get some
Speaker 1: kind of compensation or just help through that period because
Speaker 1: that's that's a really rough transition winter Fridays. What's your
Speaker 1: happy take? My happic take is about that awkward moment
Speaker 1: when you talk to somebody in the office but they
Speaker 1: don't respond because they have headphones on and they're listening
Speaker 1: to music. It's usually not something that's important enough that
Speaker 1: you are going to like go really out of your
Speaker 1: way to get them to yank their headphones out, like
Speaker 1: walk over to them and chake them, or say their
Speaker 1: name a bunch of times really loud. But I just,
Speaker 1: as with so many things, I just like I need
Speaker 1: some kind of face saving etiquette for when I'm like, hey, Becca,
Speaker 1: and then everyone in the office except Rebecca has heard
Speaker 1: me say that and nobody responds, like what do I
Speaker 1: say next? Um, Honestly, I don't have this problem. What
Speaker 1: do you do when you talk to somebody and they
Speaker 1: don't respond? I think I just escalate their name louder
Speaker 1: and louder and louder and stick in here. But then
Speaker 1: what if it's like something really trivial, like all you
Speaker 1: wanted to say was like did you read that article
Speaker 1: this morning or something? I think you can avoid this
Speaker 1: just by talking to people only via chat. Okay, don't
Speaker 1: talk out loud. Yeah, stop talking to people. That's the answer,
Speaker 1: probably through a lot of things in the office. That's
Speaker 1: the half big take, really, and this has been half
Speaker 1: big takes, half baked takes. Thanks for listening to game Plan.
Speaker 1: You can find me on Twitter at Francesca today and
Speaker 1: I'm at rs Greenfield. Call into our hotline tell us
Speaker 1: our half big take or whatever else. The number is
Speaker 1: two and two six one seven zero one six six.
Speaker 1: If you like our show, please go to Apple Podcasts
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen and just take a couple of
Speaker 1: seconds to rate review, subscribe, give us a little shout out.
Speaker 1: It helps more people find out about our show. The
Speaker 1: show is produced by Liz Smith and Magnus Hendrickson. Had
Speaker 1: a podcast is Francesca Levy And We'll see you next week. Bye. Hi?
Speaker 1: Oh wait, what do we say? Hi? I'm Francisca Levie, Right,
Speaker 1: that's always story, Okay,