It's not only women who are sexually abused at work. Sylvia Ann Hewlett reports on a new frontier in the #MeToo movement.
Kamran Hamid felt that he had finally got career traction. He was moving up the ranks in the IT department of a FTSE 100 company, and his team had just landed a big win: they had succeeded in "sorting" a huge system incompatibility among the company's European divisions.
So the whole team went out after work for a few pints to celebrate. Smelling hefty year-end bonuses, they were ready to party. By 9pm everyone was at least a little tipsy, and at least one man was plastered: the managing director who had led the project, Roger Evans. He was sitting on top of the bar, shirt unbuttoned, fly partially unzipped, surrounded by other raucous men and empty shot glasses. Sighting Kamran, he drunkenly waved him over.
Kamran pretended not to see and slipped outside for a smoke. Five minutes later, Roger came charging out. "He just went straight for me," Kamran says, "grabbing and twisting my tie and pushing me up against the nearest wall. He then jammed his face in front of mine and started spewing poison. 'You think you're a poster boy, don't you? Well f*** all this diversity crap, all you are is a dirty brown faggot, and I'm thinking you need a little roughing up, to help you get things in perspective!' "
"Roger let out a baying laugh," Kamran recalls, "and twisted my tie even harder. It became so tight that I started gagging, tearing up. Then, keeping a lock on my tie with one hand, he reached down with the other and started undoing my belt. By now a crowd had gathered, and as he fumbled with my buckle a woman gasped loudly. That somehow broke the spell. People stopped just looking. Two big blokes came forward and pulled Roger off me."
With that, Kamran was safe from physical harm — but Roger had indeed "put things in perspective" for him. "The depth of my humiliation is hard to describe," he says. "People tried to help me, offering to get ice and bandages for my neck, which had red score marks from where Roger had strangled me with my tie. But I ducked out of the pub and fled the scene. I didn't want pity and I especially didn't want my colleagues to see me as this slobbering, shattered wreck. I walked the streets for hours, until I was calm enough to catch a train home. And I kept on thinking, 'One of the blokes who pulled Roger off me is a direct report of mine. How am I going to face him on Monday morning?' "
Over the weekend, other thoughts crowded in. "I kept asking myself, 'What was the real trigger? What made Roger want to take me down so brutally? Was it because I'm a brown Middle Easterner, or because I'm gay?' " By Sunday night, Kamran had given up on deep questions and had only one thing on his mind: how to get away from Roger without ruining his career. On Monday morning, he applied for a transfer to another division of the company.
He gave no reason for his request. He did not denounce Roger to anyone or file a complaint with HR. As far as he was concerned, more than enough people already knew about his humiliation. He wasn't out for justice. He just wanted to get away, right away. So when the company agreed to let him transfer, but said that the only role open would amount to a demotion, he accepted anyway. The new position was in Frankfurt, which meant that Kamran would be far away from Roger. Six months later he got even farther away, jumping ship to join a competitor. Roger stayed at his job. He was, after all, a big producer. No one else denounced him either. Perhaps he had passed that incident off as mere "horseplay". And perhaps he had done it before and got away with that too.
Would Roger have felt so free to assault Kamran publicly if Kamran hadn't openly identified as a gay man? Or if he had been white? It's impossible to know, but this much is clear: Roger harassed and assaulted him because he believed that he could get away with it. When Roger called him a "dirty brown faggot" in a crowded pub in front of his whole team, he wanted the world to know that he, not Kamran, held all the cards.
And he was right. It was Kamran, not Roger, who accepted a demotion and left. This incident took place several years ago, and one hopes that today, with #MeToo, a man like Kamran would speak up, go to the police, file complaints and demand justice. But there are still plenty of Rogers out there, acting abusively, and plenty of Kamrans, keeping silent. That's in part because legal systems and corporate HR departments have done a truly poor job of protecting a range of employees in the workplace: not only straight white women, but also LGBT people, employees of colour and immigrants.
The shocking data
Some of the data on sexual misconduct in the workplace is alarming. According to research conducted by the CTI (Centre for Talent Innovation, a research organisation in America that I founded and led for 16 years), 34 per cent of women in the US report having suffered sexual harassment in the workplace, ranging from inappropriate emails to stalking, and 7 per cent have suffered sexual assault at work, ranging from groping to outright rape.
The numbers are similar in the UK. In a 2017 survey, the research company Savanta ComRes found that 40 per cent of women and 18 pe cent of men had experienced some form of unwanted sexual behaviour in the workplace.
In both countries, people of colour and LGBT individuals such as Kamran are particularly vulnerable. In Britain, a shocking one in eight LGBT women reported being seriously sexually assaulted or raped at work. While, in the US, 21 per cent of black men experience sexual harassmentat work (compared with 13 per cent of white men) and 7 per cent experience sexual assault (compared with 4 per cent of white men.)
Here's another shocker: despite the high rates of assault against gay men, the man-on-man abuse that Kamran suffered is still, overall, rarer than woman-on-man abuse: 68% of the men who were sexually harassed and 76 per cent of the men who were sexually assaulted report that a woman was the perpetrator.
Before you question how such a thing is possible — most men are, after all, physically stronger than women — remember that relations of power in the workplace usually have little to do with physical strength. Take, for example, a recently retired black publishing executive, Warren Thomas. Warren has had a long and distinguished career. He is proud of his four-decades-long marriage and his loving family. Yet despite his squeaky-clean personal life and stellar career, at his last job a white female executive regularly sidled up to him at company events and told him, in a whisper deliberately loud enough for others to hear, that he was a "black stud". When no one else could see, she plastered herself against him and grabbed his bottom.
Time after time, Warren merely stepped away and kept quiet. What would happen if a black man accused a white woman of groping and harassing him? At best, he might become the office joke. At worst, the white woman might turn the tables and say that he was the one harassing or assaulting her.
After several months of increasingly explicit sexual abuse, Warren couldn't keep silent any longer. He went to the police, evidence in hand, and filed for a restraining order. He then met with his CEO, who reluctantly agreed to separate the two. But the big boss did not punish the woman in any way. He seemed to view the whole matter as ridiculous. Warren was now able to do his job without distraction, but only after suffering months of stress and anxiety, not to mention acute embarrassment that the CEO's condescension only aggravated.
And when the predator is a powerhouse in their field, men, just like women, suffer enormous distress and are often run out of their career. Nimrod Reitman, a graduate student at New York University, is a case in point. In a recent, high-profile lawsuit, he accused his supervisor, Avital Ronell, a distinguished professor at the university, of pressuring him into a sexual relationship, and then retaliating when he resisted — he'd become distressed by her demand that he be sexually available at all hours of the day and night and that they share a bed. According to Reitman, after the break-up Ronell punished him by criticising his research and blackballing him for jobs — effectively ending his career in academia. Does this sound familiar?
Of course, female-on-male sexual aggression is much less common than male-on-female, but the Reitman case is a sobering reminder that harassment and assault are all about power — sexual desire is a small part of the story. The old boys' club and the new girls' club weaponise sex to protect turf and territory — and keep interlopers out. Intersectionalities matter here. As the CTI data shows, women of colour and gay women are particularly vulnerable. White men may fantasise about them as hypersexed, and powerful men may view them as powerless and afraid to speak up. Tragically, that powerlessness is often real.
What's the worst occupation or sector, if you're looking for a working environment free of harassment and assault? The answer is media (with technology coming in second), according to one American report. In the media industry, a full 41 per cent of women and 22 per cent of men report harassment. It's much better (or at least safer) to work in finance or legal services.
Digging a little deeper, this industry-level data (from Fortune 500 global companies) is surprising. Who knew that men are much safer in technology than in media (though both sectors are off the charts in terms of the harassment of women)? And it's a pleasant shock that finance is relatively tame these days. After all, the banking and hedge-fund world has provided rich material on sexual harassment and assault for prominent movies (such as The Wolf of Wall Street) and lawsuits.
When I asked a Brazilian woman, Maria Mendonça, why she didn't tell her company's HR about a supervisor who tried to force himself on her at a holiday party, she stared at me as if I were daft. "Look," she said, "I'm an immigrant. Another strike against me is that I'm Brazilian. Just yesterday, someone asked if I was stocking up on teeny bikinis, the other asked how many times I was planning to get laid. When I told a white female co-worker about these comments, she said, 'You must have done something to egg him on.' "
In the UK as in the US, the #MeToo movement has primarily focused on the experiences of young white women — and society is proving often willing to swing into action to protect them. But every man and woman should have the right to do their job without falling prey to predators in the workplace. The #MeToo movement has made great contributions, but it now needs to widen its tent.
Fortunately, many companies and corporate leaders are working to stamp out sexual harassment and assault in their ranks. It's not just a question of good corporate citizenship. When you protect your team from harassment and assault, you are protecting yourself and your organisation from scandal and legal liabilities. You are also enabling talented men and women to fulfil their potential with you rather than quitting to jump ship for a competitor. Perhaps even worse, they may "quit and stay" — suffering in silence, marking time, unable to fulfil their potential for themselves or for your company.
What companies can do
Loudly refresh the values
The first action any company must take is to update its corporate values actively to foster a culture that takes a stand against sexual misconduct and to announce those values emphatically — and publicly. The following key steps flow from insisting that corporate values aren't platitudes, they're policies.
Set a zero-tolerance policy
When credible accusations of sexual misconduct emerged at Deloitte UK, the CEO, David Sproul, confronted the problem head-on. Women were initially sceptical that anyone would pay attention. "For our companies — who cares that a senior VP … had grabbed my boobs and tried to kiss me in a drunken rage at a bar? It will not start his downfall similar to the Weinsteins and Spaceys of this world," one woman at Deloitte posted on Reddit. It turned out she was wrong about that. Sproul in fact fired multiple senior partners for sexual misconduct. PwC, EY and KPMG's UK operations all soon followed with actions against sexual predators in their ranks.
Zero tolerance also means forbidding the use of nondisclosure agreements (NDAs) to pay off victims and enable predators to continue their misconduct. Parliament's women and equalities committee has recommended forbidding the use of NDAs to cover up allegations of unlawful discrimination. Even though such a recommendation is not yet law, companies should implement it on their own.
Turn bystanders into upstanders
One in four young women in England and Wales fear that if they report sexual harassment they will lose their jobs, a recent study reports. One way to overcome this fear is to give them workplace allies. "If one person speaks up when something happens, there's a contagious effect. If you see something inappropriate and act on it, that disrupts the culture of silence," says Asha Santos, an employment lawyer who has developed what she terms "bystander intervention programmes" for several companies, including Unilever.
Steps to make upstanding easier than bystanding should start at the top, Santos adds, with a message from the CEO that bystanders can and must speak up, with no fear of retaliation. Santos also suggests bystanding training seminars to show how to respond to common scenarios of workplace misconduct. IBM's chief human resource officer, Diane Gherson, has found a "really huge appetite" for programmes that turn bystanders into upstanders. "People are only too willing to speak up," she says. "They just need a little training."
Introduce better reporting systems
If an employee reports sexual harassment or assault, many HR departments' priority has been to avoid a lawsuit — and avoid the need to fire or reassign the "brilliant jerks" (high-performing executives) who have been accused. This attitude is changing as awareness grows that sexual misconduct is a business risk, but not every HR officer has got the message yet. As a result, many employees do not trust HR to protect them. That's why companies must offer more than one channel to report misconduct.
IBM, for example, has a safe line called Talk It Over. As Gherson explains: "You tell your story, confidentially, without having to give your name, but at the end the professional on the other end will say, 'If you want me to take this forward, I'm going to need to use names, but here's how I'll use them. Here's who will know.' "
What individuals can do
The main task for individuals is to protect their teams from misconduct and a hostile workplace atmosphere — and to protect themselves from possible malicious gossip and even slander, while giving young women and men of all kinds the opportunities and attention they deserve.
Don't dress provocatively — and be careful with the signals you send out
Sharon Ryan, general counsel at International Paper, joined the firm in 1988, just a few years out of law school. Today she offers fierce advice to young women and men: "I tell them, at company events do not overdrink, do not dance on tables and do not hang out at the bar until all hours. When dinner is over at 9pm, go right to your room. And look like a professional at all times. I particularly come down on young women who wear low-cut dresses or young men who wear too-tight trousers. Every now and then I send an employee home to get changed. If you want to vamp it up in your private life, fine, but dressing as a flirt has no place at work." Old-school advice perhaps, but sound. Ryan also recommends only "church hugs" at work (side to side, one-armed) rather than frontal, two-armed embraces.
All that may sound harsh — and certainly a low-cut blouse or a bottom-hugging pair of trousers is never justification for harassment or assault — but any woman or man should primarily be at the job to do the job, and their clothing and behaviour should reflect that.
Don't meet in bars, hotel rooms or apartments
Harvey Weinstein had a habit of calling young women for "business meetings" in hotel rooms, where he then groped or raped them. Presuming that you are not a predator, why create a situation where others may gossip and the other person involved may feel uncomfortable?
Instead, hold meetings in an office with an open door, or a coffee shop, or any other setting that lends itself to transparency. If you and a colleague are travelling together on business, don't hold your late-night prep for the next morning's presentation in your hotel room or a bar. Have it in a safe zone: the lobby or one of the conference rooms or business centres that every big hotel has.
To avoid favouritism, you will need to avoid late night one-on-one meetings in hotel rooms and bars with both genders: you cannot stay up late at a corner table with John but not with Joan, or vice versa.
Be public about your protégés
If you're a senior manager taking on a prospective protégé, make sure that everyone sees what you are doing and why. It's not just a matter of avoiding misunderstandings, it's a matter of creating understanding. Put that junior person in front of colleagues, so they too can see their value and why you're advocating for them.
In 2016, Tiger Tyagarajan, CEO of the professional services giant Genpact, brought in a much younger, attractive young woman, Katie Stein, to be the firm's new chief strategy officer. He then put her in the most public position possible: he assigned her to present the company's strategic plan at its annual investors' day, in front of Genpact's board and most important investors. As Tyagarajan recalls it: "After she spoke, one of our biggest investors came up to me and said, 'Where'd you find her? She was great!' He was closely followed by my chairman, who said, 'She did a fabulous job.' "
When a top shareholder and your chairman spontaneously compliment your hire, you can rest assured that no one is whispering about either of you behind your backs.
Shifting the power
Sexual misconduct in the workplace affects women and men of every colour, background and orientation. But there are actions you can take to protect yourself and those around you. The first is understanding that sexual misconduct at work is not always about old, powerful men and young, pretty women. But it is always about power. Taking the steps necessary to assure that those with less power can work in safety — whatever their gender, race or nationality — will benefit everyone.
Written by: Sylvia Ann Hewlett
© The Times of London