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Transcript

Addressing The Issue

Sexual Harassment

USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work

What is sexual harassment?

A Presentation By:

Unsolicited verbal or physical behaviour of a sexual nature. Sexual harassment may embrace any sexually motivated behaviour considered offensive by the recipient.

On the Agenda

1

Elaborating on Sexual Harassment

2

Creating an Action Plan

TODAY'S

SCHEDULE

3

Potential Outcomes/Effectiveness

4

Challenges to Implementation

Elaborating

Lexi

The history of sexual harassment has been a rather long and complex one.

Congress

Happening in Congress

  • Numerous members of Congress have resigned or retired after facing claims of sexual harassment, some of which had paid settlements with taxpayer dollars
  • The house of representatives passed a bipartisan bill that would reform the Congressional Accountability Act of 1995 (dictates how complaints are dealt with, created the Office of Compliance- refusal to share info about complaints due to ‘confidentiality’), but the Senate has not considered legislation to address the old law
  • 22 female senators urging senate leadership to address sexual harassment and discrimination on Capitol Hill and to reform the 20 year old law that forces survivors of harassment to undergo an arduous process
  • Resolutions have been passed requiring all congressional workplaces to participate in anti-harassment and anti-discrimination training regularly
  • The House passed a resolution that provides staffers who have been harassed or discriminated against with access to free legal representation( time.com)
  • Proposed by Democrat Republican Jackie Speier of CA: Me Too Congress Act- no longer forcing victims to undergo 30 days of counseling and 30 days of ‘cooling off’ before being able to continue with claim
  • Talk of utilizing a victim advocate to bolster complaint process

Hollywood

Harvey Wienstein

  • Where sex equality laws apply (most employment and education, some housing), there is somewhere to go to complain, law is more responsive to survivors, BUT zero tolerance is the rule virtually nowhere, resistance is far from safe or costless, perpetrators often protect one another and sometimes victims protect them too.
  • "Is this treatment equal?" not "Is this treatment morally wrong?"
  • The Me Too Movement
  • Founded in 2006
  • Tarana Burke

Kevin Spacey

Ed Westwick

James Franco

45

Ben Affleck

Happening in Hollywood

Steve Wynn

Ryan Seacrest

Action Plan

Andrew

What do we do?

Accountability

Tarana Burke (Founder of MeToo) writes that we need to hold people accountable. That includes perpatrators and bystanders.

Shauna Thomas (known female director) writes that we need to have more weinstein-esque moments.

When work places do health and safety surveys, they must collect data about sexual harassment and abuse. They can then assess the level of the problem—even when women do not feel safe to speak out—and take action.

Policy Level Change

Jenine Yancey, founder and CEO of Emtrain, sees the need for an outside, public website “that moves beyond the type of hotlines that the employers control currently,” where workers can “anonymously report workplace incidents to a neutral third-party with subject matter expertise who could identify red flag issues and bring them to the employer for action.” It would serve as a middle ground between employees staying quiet about such complaints and employees “going nuclear”—as Yancey puts it—with a legal action or public shaming on the Internet or through news channels that automatically puts companies on the defense.

Research and Education

Early Education

Early Research

Outcomes and Effectiveness

Stephanie

Accountability

Accountability

By this we mean following through with accusations by investigating and having disciplinary consequences for perpetrators. The likely outcome of this implementation would:

  • Reduce the amount of perpetrators who engage in sexual misconduct due to fear of risks and getting caught.
  • Reduce the amount of perpetrators who get away with sexual misconduct.
  • Reduce the amount of victims who are being sexually harassed.
  • Increase the number of victims who step forward knowing actions will be taken.

Policy

Workplace and National Level

Policy

Workplace:

  • Embodying an anti-harassment workplace, providing trainings and having an anonymous online website where a neutral third party is addressing incident reports will…
  • Provide ease of access for employers to report personal or known incidents.
  • Create more comfort for victims/employers to report to a third party that they know can remain unbiased and objective.
  • Maintain victims/employers confidentiality.

Nationwide:

  • Having laws the same from state to state will create
  • Consistency – everyone will be held accountable in the same manner.
  • Clearer laws so there is no room for misinterpretation.

Education and Research

Research

Education

Informing children about sexual harassment will provide a foundation about what sexual harassment is, what is not acceptable and when to report. This would be effective with…

  • Teaching children about consent and how to respect boundaries.
  • Making victims feel more comfortable speaking out about their experience if they are aware of what sexual harassment is and were spoken to about the issue at an early age.
  • Help inform schools how to respond if a student discloses their experience and how to appropriately respond to the person committing sexual harassment.

Research provides facts and knowledge about an issue, which gives reason as to why actions need to be taken. The outcome of early research would…

  • Bring awareness to the issue.
  • Create new outlook on the problem and address the need for change.
  • Assist with forming preventative measures and policy changes that will be effective.

Challenges

Taylor

Policy

Cybersecurity

Challenge: A website containing personal and sensitive information is at risk of hacking. Yahoo experienced one of the largest data breaches in the 21st century, with billions of users’ private information being published.

Challenge: The implementation of federal legislation ranges from 200-700 days. Sexual harassment must be addressed as soon as possible so that potential victims are protected.

Nationwide

Cybersecurity

Potential Solution: The use of cybersecurity measures such as firewall encryption. This ensures that individuals who share personal information on the platform will remain anonymous.

Potential Solution: Raise awareness as to the pervasiveness of the issue so that voting is unanimous. Have survivors who feel comfortable share their stories to engage legislators.

Nationwide

Early Education

Education

Early

Challenge: Some parents may oppose sharing the topic of sexual harassment with children. Sex education in general has been hotly contested in schools, with teachers being given the authority to decide which parts of the curriculum they feel are appropriate.

Potential Solution: Create a standardized curriculum that presents the topic of sexual harassment in an age appropriate manner.

Early Research

Research

Early

Challenge: Research and data collection is expensive and time consuming. It is also impossible to ethically experiment with this topic.

Potential Solution: Insist that all studies are quasi-experimental and Board approved. The government should allocate funding in the form of grants so the research is of the highest quality.

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