Anita Hill on Fighting Sexual Harassment

stories have continued to come out. More people are making accusations against powerful men in all kinds of industries, and it really seems like women and men are gaining the courage to speak up about this. Just from the sheer number of people who have come out and kind of called out this behavior as wrong and inappropriate and illegal.

It really does feel like a moment, and it's not just the amount of people coming forward, but stuff is actually happening, and that that seems new to me, that you can speak up and someone will actually get fired a powerful person for their behavior. It is a moment where something feels really different. But this isn't the first time in history that something has felt really different about

the way we treat sexual harassment. Of course, the entire Anita Hill episode in the early nineties showed us that sexual harassment was not only something that women had to suffer in silence, but a real actionable offense, and it was on the lips of many people for the first time. And Anita Hill is somebody who I think is uniquely positioned to show us how far we still have to go, because she's seen how far we've come from the way that we once talked about sexual harassment to now. Yeah,

of course I know about Anita Hill. She comes up a lot am I reporting, And I know the basic story that she had worked for Clarence Thomas Um when she was at the e O C. And she testified in front of this and a judiciary committee that he had sexually harassed her when he was being confirmed for Supreme Court Justice. We know he got confirmed, and I know it was a big deal, But I was a baby when this happened, so I don't I didn't actually know how big of a deal in a movement that

it was. Yeah, I was also a child when this happened, although I do have a memory of it because it was such a big deal, and it was on the news all the time, and I think that there's a huge swath of the working world that this isn't in living memory for them. Um. But from what I vaguely remember and also what I've read, I know that sexual harassment wasn't even a term people really used in any kind of regular way, and there was a big debate over whether or not Anita Hill was telling the truth.

Her credibility was smeared. People had all kinds of reasons for saying that she wasn't telling the truth. And then of course there were those women and men wearing the I believe we need to help pins who who were coming out on the record to say they did believe her. But that was the central question, was whether or not she was telling the truth. And it was really the first time that even companies started developing policies around sexual harassment.

We knew this kind of thing happened, but there wasn't a word for it, and there wasn't really a way to talk about it that everybody kind of agreed on. It's interesting to see the different memes that have come out, Like back in the nine Views, it was I believe her and now it's me too, which I know now a lot of women don't get believed still, but it does seem like a shift in the way we're talking

about the victims of harassment. Instead of people saying we need to believe these people enough people feel empowered to talk about it. They don't think they're not going to be believed. Everyone's posting me too, and people are believing them. Of course, the fact that there are this many handles and there are still this many stories shows that not

enough has changed since the time of Anita Hill. Our editor in chief John michaels Waite interviewed Anita Hill as part of Bloomberg's Year Ahead Summit, and we think that interview is really informative as to what actually has changed in the law and in culture and what still hasn't changed. So we're going to hear that interview now, press a. Hill, thank you very much for for coming coming to the Year Ahead. Um, I'm going to cut straight to the

chase rather quickly. Despite your impressive record at brandeis. We're going to talk quite a lot about sexual harassment. And my starting question is I was actually in Los Angeles living on the outskirts of Hollywood that we have the Senate Judiciary hearings. I remember a lot of people walking around with badges. I believe, believing in you. And back then, a lot of people thought the whole debate about harassment would change and that we wouldn't be living through what

we are now. Looking at what's happened with Harvey Weinstein and this new storm about this subject, do you think this time it will change in a different way. It's like any movement, like any energy, it develops and then you move forward and then there's a plateau. And I think that's what happened. But I don't think we should

underestimate what happened either, because there was significant change. There were a new civil rights law that had had been doomed UM that was passed almost within weeks of the hearing. The number of complaints to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission

sexual harassment complaints double within two years of the hearing. UM. Actually, businesses started to put into place policies and procedures UM, and before the hearings maybe there would have been I think around ten of companies might have put policies in

place to investigate sexual harassment UM. Afterwards of business instant and at this point now it's steadily increasing because of the case law, and we're now up to around ninety percent of companies, maybe even over ninety percent of companies have some kind of policy in place. So there has been progress, it has plateaued, and clearly if you read anything in the papers in the past few weeks, you know that there has not been enough progress. So the

question is where do we go from here? What? What? What makes the difference? Now? Do you think the business now sees this as a serious threat to the bottom line? Is that? Is that really the bit which makes the difference is where business thinks of this as something that you could really have an impact on profits. It is costly sexual harassment complaints that if you prevail, if you look at the season numbers, uh, they cost millions of

dollars to companies every year. UM. But I do think that part of the motivation comes from the case law. There's been a development of case law, maybe ten to fifteen cases decided by the Supreme Court UM. And I think there is uh, there's a movement inside companies. Some companies really do want to do the right things. Sometimes it's because people have complained and they want to force

companies to do the right thing by their employees. They see that, you know, there's employees are suffering that there is not only lost and revenue, but lost in talent that can occur because of sexual harassment. Can we appze you a bision to structure? I mean I structural changes things we might need to do with the law to pushes ahead, and then cultural change, which it's harder, but often culture tends to follow structure. Do you do you think there are changes in the law that still need

to be made that would make a difference in this field. Oh? Absolutely, you're you're right. I can talk all day about policies and procedures, but I have colleagues who study what is actually going on on the ground, and they tell me that most many of the policies that are in place really don't eliminate the problem out. And that is in part where culture comes in. Because you can have all the policies that you want, and they can even be good policies, if the culture doesn't support them, no one

takes the policy seriously. They don't have to, and so there is sort of it's hard to separate culture from policy. It's almost impossible. Culture drives policy sometimes and then sometimes policy draw lives the implementation and the enforcement or excuse me, culture will drive the things on the law we could do that would make a difference in terms of changing the law. Well, the laws as another external structure. And I was secondly about internal structures and culture. Uh, there

is the external culture and structures. I think that I can push us forward too. I do believe that many of the policies that have been put in place came about because of those legal decisions that I talked about. But there are some limits in very recently in advanced case and I believe it's in two thousand thirteen decision where the court UH gave a very limited definition of what is a supervisor in terms of employee or liability.

And so the court decided that a supervisor, if a supervisor harasses, then their strict liability on the part of the corporation. But then and define what is the supervisor. What the court said was it had the supervisor had to be someone who had complete control over the employee. UH. The supervisor had to have the ability to hire, fire, demote,

punish all and and even relocate the employee. And as we know in most operations, especially when you get down to lower level employment areas, supervisors may give work assignments, which in essence is a control over the employee, but they may not have the power to hire and fire That may be may come up at a higher level. And so that very limited definition of what is the

supervisor not only doesn't match many work situations. In addition, it doesn't help many employees whose quote unquote supervisor or day to day manager is giving them a hard time. They may be harassed seeing them directlyly, they may be allowing other employees to harass. But what the court said advance was that unless you can hire and fire, you are not the company is not liable for your behavior. And is that something Congress could change or is it

something you have to do state by state. It's something that Congress can change. But I think one of the things that I'd like to get people to think about is that what the law is to me is a floor. It's not a ceiling. You a corporation could say, for our purposes, supervisor is anyone who has control over the daily employment of an individual, at least for purposes of harassment and other kinds of workplace violations that they see or are part of. And so I think we you know,

the law can push us in the right direction. And I think the law in this case is wrong and we should be taking a different direction. But I would like to think if a company is absolutely certain that women and girls and and all employees have a right to work in a place free of harassment, then they're going to be looking beyond the strict contours of the law to make up rules and regulations that best fit

the values and the needs of a company. Now do you think that will require a new kind of imaginative way of thinking. I suppose we're now moving into the kind of cultural field away from the law. But talking earlier technology, are the things that we can do using that that companies could now use to to see or to measure I suppose that the harassment. I think there

are all kinds of ways. I will say, though, we were talking about external factors, and one of the things that has happened over the past few years, and I think people have if you've been reading the papers, then you might have taken note out since and and even in the years after. So one of the first questions that I was always asked, whether it's by media or

people on the street, or why don't women complain? And I think we have moved beyond that in this latest round of stories, and we're looking at what is the behavior and how are our systems and structures and are enablers? Uh? And individuals and who keep it occurring or support it knowingly or unknowingly. How are all of these things keeping

this behavior going? Uh? And so I think we have moved to a different conversation and I would hope that that is what drives the inquiry now as opposed to you know, we have to start with something before we develop the tactics. We have to figure out what our

motivation is. And the motivation you think should be very clearly is not just to follow the law, but to get much broader than that and set up a culture where people immediately I don't do this to be where there was even the slightest hint of it, it is

it is dealt with. And I think that the setting of the culture has always been difficult because I think most places are risk averse and they are assuming that maybe if if we don't look into these you know, sort of look underneath the rugs and inside the desk stowers. This won't won't happen in our company. But if you look at the number of women who have participated in the me too hashtag and just people who have spoken out, we know that this continues to be a serious problem.

And it seems to me that it's just a matter of time before something happens in just about any company if you haven't examined. So I think the motivation now is strong to be proactive because you can get media attention that will not be good not only for your business, but also for businesses reputation if the light it shines on. If you look at Uber, if you look at Fox News, if you look at Google. Even at this point, all of these companies are now being scrutinized because of stories

that have come out. And so I think we are at a point now where it is in everyone's interest to try to be proactive, and we need to look at some kind of traditional approaches to being proactive, and one is look at your companies, make assessments. Um It's it seems to me that people say, well, oh, we haven't ever had a sexual harassment complaint, Does that in fact mean that there is no sexual harassment in your company,

I would I would be very skeptical of reaching that conclusion. Um, so do something you need to cool in outsiders to come and do those things. I think at some point you you should. And I think one of the things that triggers the need for outside investigation is, in fact, if you hear of people who are very high profile, high performers, very instrumental either in the founding of a company like Harving Lines, or very instrumental in the revenues of a company, that you should in fact bring in

outside people to to make an assessment. In that way, the investigations have integrity. You can you because you have a truly independent outside investigation. But you know, we should be using the same kind of technology that you used to improve your businesses in other ways, should be engaged in um and improving the workplace, in the workplace culture

for everyone. Why do you think the boundary lies between this desire to to pre pre to prevent on the one side, and then the other thing, that sort of right to privacy that that line Hobby Weinstein seems to move that line a little bit the cost of privacy maybe or do you how do you feel about that well, And I think that's where the assessment has to be, at least initially aimed at the culture, because when the privacy, privacy, privacy,

Now I'm saying privacy, the privacy problemish, it's just like that, Um, the privacy problem really occurs when you're looking in investigating individuals, and but when you're investigating the entire company, what is the climate life? What is the culture like for people?

Do our women have you serve as your employees? Are they saying harassment is a problem here, even though they're not filing complaints, and that that would but that would surely to justify the or to to work in the system you're describing, you would go to an outside firm and say, will you survey all our women employees? Right? And the surveys they have to be have to be prior anonymous. Yeah, they have to be anonymous. But at the same time, what they might yield is that there

are culprits. I think though, once you start investigating a culture, you might find that there are a certain individuals who are offenders or maybe repeat offenders, and then you have to decide what you're going to do about it. In terms of the outside climate. You you, we talked about, you mentioned the media, you, we talked about the pressure of the law. I mean, one great obvious difference now compared with what that is. We now have Donald Trump

as president. To what extent does he make it harder to deal with the issue of sexual arrestment. I assume that people vote for Donald Trump for a number of reasons. But what I also assume is that we all have an opportunity now to look at his language and to analyze his language in a reason fashion. And what is deeply troubling about his language was not only the normalizing of this predatory behavior, but was the sense of his

entitlement to behave in a certain way. And I think that's one of the real flags that if you have an individual who feels, whether it's the President of the United States or somebody in your organization, who feels entitled to do whatever they want to whoever they want because they're in that position of power, then that is your red flag and something that you should all be pushing back against because it won't just begin and in with

sexual harassment. It will be all kinds of behavior that can be bullying, that can be other forms of discrimination, racial discrimination, homophobia in the wordplay, and that's something that you want to You won't find a question what would be this is about the year ahead two thousand and eighteen. What would be a reasonable kind of metric to measure us measure things by which you could say, look, it has got better because of X. What? What is what is the sign that you would like to see that

would mean that something really has changed? Well, first of all, if you're doing the surveys, are two things that can happen. You can take the survey now and then taken months later. Are you feeling safe? Do you feel that this is harassment free? That you feel that you're moving forward not harassment? I think the other metric, and this is one that

I talked about, is a change in leadership. Have you really examined the kinds of culture that you want and realize that in order to get that culture, you need to diversify your leadership, in your management, in your company. And I really believe that, um, yeah, and in companies

that have actually address this problem. Uh, there's some research that chose that over a year or two leadership changes that you get more diversity and leadership more diversity in terms of women moving into leadership roles, more adversity in terms of people of color. Once you make a commitment to making sure that people are treated equally and fairly and in your workplaces, that's the Hill thank you very much.

Basically to other thank yeah. I think it's really useful to hear from someone like Anita Hill because she has this long view that can make you see how these moments can affect change. Even though she did say that it will plateau. But even hearing that before her testimony, nobody had sexual arrest policies and now companies do. It's things like that that make the moment right now feel a lot less defeatist, like, yeah, we're outing sexual harassers,

but how can we really make the workplace better? And she gave some actual solutions for that. She did keep hitting on that theme of external versus internally imposed changes, or kind of structural versus cultural, and the structural stuff is, you know, those policies and the laws, and she talked about how all that has changed, but she also kind of made it sound like she is seeing something of

a cultural shift too. I liked that she mentioned, you know, we're not necessarily having the conversation about why don't morrow women speak up? Because so many women are speaking up now. Now we're having this conversation about why is this behavior happening and and what structures are enabling it? And I agree with you there is a defeatism and a sort of sadness, and hearing all this stuff, it feels very repetitive.

But I'm encouraged by how different things actually are now than they were in a way I didn't even really fully grasp until I listened to this interview. And on a lighter note, let's do some half big takes, happy fake takes. If you have a half big take, you can call our voicemail. It's two on two six one zero one Becca. What's your half big take this week? My half big take is winter Fridays. Okay, I know we have a half big take for every day of

the week, so here we go. Um. I just think that it's way better to get out of work early on those dark winter Fridays, or it's just as good as a summer Friday. We need it. It's so dark, gets dark so early, no one's doing any work, like, let us go so depressing. Not every company even has

a summer Friday policy. But even when they don't, I feel like they're is just like an accepted sense on Friday afternoons in the summer that nobody's really getting any work done early, saying all the time, should we not should we just not work on Fridays? Like I think we should work on Fridays, but I do think people should get out early, but just we should accept that the second half of every Friday all throughout the year

is garbage. But especially after the time change, particularly, we should get some I feel like we should get some kind of compensation or just help through that period because that's that's a really rough transition winter Fridays. What's your happy take? My happic take is about that awkward moment when you talk to somebody in the office but they don't respond because they have headphones on and they're listening

to music. It's usually not something that's important enough that you are going to like go really out of your way to get them to yank their headphones out, like walk over to them and chake them, or say their name a bunch of times really loud. But I just, as with so many things, I just like I need some kind of face saving etiquette for when I'm like, hey, Becca, and then everyone in the office except Rebecca has heard me say that and nobody responds, like what do I

say next? Um, Honestly, I don't have this problem. What do you do when you talk to somebody and they don't respond? I think I just escalate their name louder and louder and louder and stick in here. But then what if it's like something really trivial, like all you wanted to say was like did you read that article this morning or something? I think you can avoid this just by talking to people only via chat. Okay, don't talk out loud. Yeah, stop talking to people. That's the answer,

probably through a lot of things in the office. That's the half big take, really, and this has been half big takes, half baked takes. Thanks for listening to game Plan. You can find me on Twitter at Francesca today and I'm at rs Greenfield. Call into our hotline tell us our half big take or whatever else. The number is two and two six one seven zero one six six.

If you like our show, please go to Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen and just take a couple of seconds to rate review, subscribe, give us a little shout out. It helps more people find out about our show. The show is produced by Liz Smith and Magnus Hendrickson. Had a podcast is Francesca Levy And We'll see you next week. Bye. Hi? Oh wait, what do we say? Hi? I'm Francisca Levie, Right, that's always story, Okay,