Breaking The Culture of Silence
For two years we have seen both a criminal and a civil court case, play out to its sad completion, the result of a workplace safety issue, which led, allegedly to rape. Despite the vulgarity of the trials, which are the bluntest of instruments for remedy, through these trials, we have had the very rare opportunity to see how all the various stakeholders responded or didn’t respond. In our armchairs, we have cast judgement on who we believed and why, discussed what was ‘normal’ victim behaviour, humoured conspiracy theories about the allegation being a political strategy, discussed the ethics of chequebook journalism, had a woman and her parents (and friends) called liars in court and forced to testify graphic details that would be printed and reprinted to remain on the internet forever, over and over again. We’ve seen text messages forensically analysed, private details leaked, and multiple tangential court cases launched.
When I say that gendered workplace safety issues are something Boards, executives and companies are not taking seriously enough, I hope everyone remembers this dark period. No matter who you believe no company wants its reputation, its practices, its actions or lack of action, its CCTV footage, its stakeholders text messages and emails, its conduct at external places where lip readers will analyse what was really said, and it’s very culture held out for the world to judge on the front page of every newspaper for 3 years. And most workplaces can’t afford to settle a multi-million-dollar compensation claim not to mention the legal costs of defending any issues in court. And for the humane workplaces who realise what is truly at the centre of this issue — no one wants their staff to be traumatised, relegated to hospital, or driven suicidal over an event that happened in their workplace.
So, how does this relate to Australian tech? I could go through every action and inaction that I think the Australian parliament, as a workplace, got wrong or right in how they handled the events that led to Brittany Higgins making her allegation, but that would require a book that I do hope someone is writing, but that’s beyond the capability of this lil’ blog. What I want readers to consider, especially against the backdrop of the many, many allegations of assault, harassment, and discrimination minorities in the Australian tech industry have recently highlighted, is that unless we do better, unless we give this the attention and focus it deserves, this is something every workplace will have to have on their risk register and discuss at each board meeting. Whether you will meet your numbers for the next quarter will pale into comparison to whether one of your staff members takes an unaddressed complaint to The Project. I wrote previously about the resources for Boards and their positive duty that came into force this week. If you are a CEO, Board member, investor please read it.
This issue is not rare, its just most men in this sector think it is, because people’s stories don’t make it to them.
If you think I’m being alarmist, or overly dramatic, please read Lucy Wark’s LinkedIn post here about some of the stories she has been told over the last few months and her post today where she talked of her own experience. I’ve written previously about my own recent assault and harassment just a couple months ago, and if thats not enough, here are just a couple stories told to me in the last couple months that I’m allowed to share (of the ~40 shared with me):
o A male company CEO bringing a single red rose to an M &A discussion with a female founder of a company he was looking to buy, calling her ‘sushi eater’ because she was gay but continually telling her how attractive she was and asking if she would consider ‘turning’.
o A female executive who, after finding out a person she had hired was the subject of an extremely traumatic blog post which alleged he had committed sexual assault, engaged with the male executives of the company for advice. They gave her two options — one was to ask the women if the assault actually happened or was hindsight remorse, the other option was to consider whether even if the allegation was true, would it negatively impact this person’s ability to be effective in the role.
This is in addition to the countless stories of bullying and harassment that targets felt was gendered. Many who have shared very painful stories that they have never told anyone. Many of whom are no longer in the industry because they have been too traumatised to stay. Almost none of them felt heard, listened to, or had their issues addressed, and many of them felt they had no real option but to stay quiet.
As Jessy Wu has written today “ Because there are extremely rational reasons to remain silent. The thinking goes: am I putting a target on my own back? Could my former employer claw back ESOP by accusing me of violating a non-disparagement clause? Will future employers see me as a poor ‘cultural fit’ for high growth startups because I believe certain things shouldn’t be broken for the sake of moving fast”?
I have asked almost everyone I’ve spoken to over the last few months, what they wished had been done differently, and the most consistent answer was they wished they had somewhere or someone to go to, for help. And as we saw yesterday in Brittany Higgins’s mothers testimony in the defamation case “I wanted to know why nobody helped her?” Brittany replied “there was no one to help”.
While Boards now have a positive duty to create a safe workplace, it’s clear we need a whole of system — or rather a whole of ecosystem approach, if we are to truly change the culture. Top down, and ground up. That starts with giving people the space to access resources, to share their experiences, to get advice.
Today, an initiative has launched which is the culminative effort of a number of women in the tech ecosystem, Grapevine. It’s a grassroots initiative to take the burden off individual acts of courage. It allows the sharing of de-identified personal stories about experiences of bullying and harassment, offer solidarity and support to those affected, provide practical guidance and equip leaders with the knowledge and resources to take action. A few months ago, I promised to stand up an open-source set of solutions after talking with the ecosystem, and I’ll still publish these, but Grapevine will be a better consolidation of most of these.
As Kirstin Hunter explained in her LinkedIn post today “We are launching Grapevine because we believe that the tech industry has structural vulnerabilities that make it susceptible to issues of bullying and harrassment. But in our small organisations, how do recipients of this behaviour learn how to recognise when a line is crossed? How do inexperienced leaders learn how to respond? How do the people carrying out these behaviours learn to be better?”.
The goal is to use sunlight as the best disinfectant, and education to enable people to do better.
An enormous hat tip to the women who have led this — Paloma Newton, Kirstin Hunter, Jessy Wu, Lucy Wark, Lauren Capelin, Misha Garg, Margot Kilgour, Emma Earley. I have made a small contribution to fund its stand up, but these women are the driving force and a wonderful example of what can be built quickly when a group of people are motivated (and please read all their LinkedIn posts about what has motivated them). I’m so proud to support in even a small way, this next generation of leaders looking to effect positive change. In time I hope others who care about this issue will step in and assist in supporting its sustainability.
A piece of advice I was given early in my career is that your values are not really your values unless you are prepared to sacrifice something for it. These women have sacrificed their time, effort, undertaken emotional labour to get this initiative going and it won’t be a small thing that they will have to continue to make that sacrifice to manage this platform with advice, content moderation, answering questions etc. If removing discrimination, bullying and harassment is a value you or your organisation say you care about, then I encourage you to support this initiative with whatever means you have.
