To Break the Cycle, Break the Wheel
Author: Diana Ruiz, CEO, Women’s Global Leadership Initiative
Co-authored by Elizabeth Rossen
For 30 years, Harvey Weinstein, the arguably most powerful man in Hollywood, abused dozens of young women in an “open secret,” and nothing happened. This past week marks the one-year anniversary from the now-infamous Access Hollywood tape featuring none other than our country’s most divisive electoral-elected president. In the past few days new horrifying allegations uncovered involving New Orleans renowned chef, John Besh and separately a $32 million settlement involving Bill O’Reilly; not to mention the ubiquitous lawsuits involving tech darlings Uber, SoFi and Google. Sensing a trend yet?
The common thread running through most of these cases is wealthy, mostly white, men in a position of power who take advantage of their influence. For many of these men, their behavior and actions aren’t even considered criminal or illegal and maybe that’s the problem.
According to RAINN, out of every 1000 rapes, only 310 are reported to police. Of those 310, only 57 lead to arrest, and a mere 7 out of 1000 accused rapists are eventually convicted. These are not encouraging statistics for those survivors considering putting their lives on hold — or even at risk — to tell their story.
In the case of Harvey Weinstein, dozens of detailed and corroborating accounts of sexual harassment have now uncovered new accounts of sexual assault, which thankfully is a crime. But, the question begs to be asked — how many more women were sexually harassed and assaulted by men in powerful positions that have yet to come forward?
The second pervasive theme to run through these disturbing mass accounts is the grimmest fact of all — these attacks occurred for years because entire chains of command were made aware and preferred to do nothing at all. For many of the victims, the consensual nature of it all served as a frankly unsurprising reminder that sexual harassment and assault of young professionals by an older “mentor” or “boss” is to be expected and ignored.
Reporting accusations of sexual harassment or sexual assault in any capacity is deeply difficult and traumatizing for a victim, but in the work place it is ten times more challenging. It rarely ends well for the accuser and tensions are not subdued but rather inflamed. Even on social media, attacks on survivors who come forward about having been assaulted are rampant, and are a successful scare tactic to prevent other victims from never coming forward at all.
This is not to belittle the self-preservation instincts of women who were forced to settle their cases against Mr. Weinstein (or Roger Ailes, or Bill O’Reilly, or a growing number of technology and finance executives), sign non-disclosure agreements that prohibited them from discussing their assault in the future, and pray for no professional retribution. But we should hold it against the enablers and accomplices, those who make money off an assaulter’s professional successes and turn a blind eye in the hope of plausible deniability should it ever hit the fan, who care more about the quarterlies, big pitch, or awards than about the dignity and well-being of their colleagues.
Complicity isn’t the deepest root of the problem — that would be the entitled attitude and abusive behavior of men who sexually assault and harass women in the first place. But that will take years and decades of conditioning to more fully address. In the meantime, we must dismantle their support system, the insidious culture of silence around abuse of power.
We must empower both women and men to speak up against sexual predators without fear of retribution, on their own behalf and on behalf of their friends and colleagues. We must prove to them that you don’t have to be as famous and established in your career as Angelina Jolie, Gwyneth Paltrow, or Ashley Judd to be taken seriously. We must also create an environment in which that is true.
At the Women’s Global Leadership Initiative, thousands of women are prepared with the education to empower women to take action in situations like this, and to create a professional culture in which speaking up against aggression is not punishable by firing or a class action lawsuit. By banding together with similar values-oriented organizations such as the League of Women Voters, Courage to Run, and the San Francisco International Women Entrepreneurs Forum, we can continue to create an inclusive gender equal environment that we would be proud to send our daughters to.
It is indisputable that the changes we want to see in political and corporate culture depend on putting more women in positions
Photo contributed by Janko Ferlic
