Sexual Harassment in the Workplace Is as Bad as Ever

Given that Donald Trump is now the example of leadership in our country, it got us thinking about the state of sexual harassment in the workplace. This is game plan. I'm Rebecca Greenfield, a reporter for Bloomberg, where I cover the workplace, and I'm Sam Grobard. I am a writer for Bloomberg business Week magazine. So sexual harassment is not just a campaign issue, not just political, and it's definitely

not just unique to Donald Jump. It's certainly not. And I think what's interesting about a lot of the things we were hearing about Trump was how blatant it was, how sort of it seemed over the top. And I remember feeling like I couldn't believe that this sort of behavior was still happening in two thousand six. Yeah, I felt that way too, and feel that way about sexual harassment in the workplace where it's not I don't expect to work in a workplace where that is appropriate at all.

I don't even really think that that's possible now, you know. I watched Madman, and I think that is a time long gone and I will never, like Joan, have to sleep with somebody to get the client. And yet we hear stories out of Fox News and other places where this kind of behavior seems to be happening well up until very recently up and maybe it's still happening. Yeah, I think it is still happening. I mean, I think a lesson with Fox News was that we didn't hear

a lot of the stories. The thing about Trump's rise to the White House combined with his what would appear to be documented history of sexual harassment, it ties the two together, and it makes it basically acceptable. It certainly does not make it disqualifying. It basically says you can do these things, you can act this way to these people, and you can achieve the highest office in the land.

I mean, you couldn't really have a more stark cause and outcome, really yeah, and I think that was something that I read over by Susan Antila at the Street, which is a website that covers finance. She talked to an employment lawyer who said that we model our behaviors after leaders we see. So even if you're not like specifically thinking like, oh, Donald Trump president, if I want to become president, I should call women certain things, but

you unconsciously just it becomes appropriate. Yeah. Those two again, those two things sort of become decoupled and it does not seem to be an impediment. Here's a very public example of it not serving as an impediment. Clarence Thomas got on the Supreme Court. Donald Trump got into the White House. I'll be politically egalitarian. Bill Clinton got into the White House. You know, you can do this, and it's okay. It was okay in it's okay in two thousand sixteen. But it's still to me as somebody who

works feels like things have changed. I want to feel like things have changed, right, And I think that they have right. But I guess that really depends on where you work. Yes, and also what you consider harassment. I mean, it is black and white, but I think to the people being harassed and the harassers That can be really confusing, right, And this, to me, I feel is one of the bigger problems, is that I never have to think about

sexual harassment as far as being done to me. But I would presume Becca that you do think about it, and the fact that you do think about it means that's part of your brain that should probably be spent on other things. There's just like the tyranny of having to think about it at all. Yeah. I can think of two things. One is sometime second guessing and thinking, oh, was that sexual harassment to that person harassed me? I overblowing it, which usually means you're not, but that feels horrible.

And then also I want to talk about one of my previous half big takes where I talked about how I didn't really like it when people complimented people on their looks at work. And I think that probably I know that comes from a place of me really wanting people to take me seriously outside of the way I look, because I even have to think about that as a woman.

And just for listeners who are not familiar with that half bag take and that half big take, I I said that I thought that people shouldn't complement each other on their looks at work, and that includes clothing, hat and glasses, accessories, updates, um, just because I think it's better to not. I think it can make people uncomfortable. And when I said I think it can make people uncomfortable, I mean I've been made uncomfortable by that when men have done that to me. Do I think that they're

evil sexual harass sers who need to be fired? No, I don't, but it definitely comes from the place of having to think about it and trying to shield myself from something. Again, that's just like another process that you have to be aware of that you know, guys don't

and that's lucky of me. You know, there are women who are harassed at work, and to talk more about that, we have with us Claire Setteth, who is a reporter at Bloomberg Business Week who for the last few months has been talking to almost twenty women about the various ways they've been sexually harassed at work. Thanks for coming on and talking to us. Yeah, thanks for having me.

So you've talked over a dozen women who have been sexually harassed at work, Yes, I have, and their stories have ranged from mildly infuriating and frustrating to absolutely tragic where you don't think that this would still be happening. Do you want to give some examples of the tragic things that are still happening. Yeah, well, I think you know.

When the Roger Ales news hit with Fox News, that was the very classic, um what legal experts called pro quo harassment, where a man in position of power tells his underlying sleep with me, or you lose your job, or you don't get your raise or whatever. That is

sort of the classic standard harassment. Then there's also what is known as hostile work environment, which is where you're not requested to do sexual favors or anything like that, but it's pretty much made clear to you that you are being objectified, or comments are being made about you, or maybe you're touched in a way that you don't want to be touched, and it just makes it very difficult for you to do your job with any sort of level of comfort. So both of those still exists.

The quid pro quo stuff is sort of the mad Men era days that I didn't think until I started talking to women that it was still as commons as it is. But unfortunately Um, it is the case, especially in food service. I talked to someone who worked on a horse farm, and you know, it's sort of non traditional workplace environments are you don't necessarily have the company culture and the compliance training and the meetings about diversity and this sort of stuff. Um, where the sort of

old school way of doing things still rains. Claire, you're just referring to somebody working on a horse farm. I was curious to know what kinds of companies do or did these women work for. They worked at everything from one woman worked at Google, down to the horse farm, to a coffee shop in California to oh gosh, um Washington, d C. She works with politicians and a sitting politician

put his hands between her legs in a meeting. One woman worked at the u N and had the High Commissioner for Refugees who used to be the Prime Minister of the Netherlands acost her in a meeting. She actually sued, but her case was thrown out because if you work at the UN you have diplomatic community. Wow. So yeah, I was thinking maybe the quid pro quols stuff didn't happen in the office, that happened in these non traditional empire ments. But it sounds like, yeah, it really matter.

It really just depends. I mean, it depends on the people that you work with and how seriously your company takes it if and when something does happen. I talked to a lot of employment experts, both psychologists and legal experts, who said, you know, essentially this is a cultural problem. Women experience this in all facets of their life. And so if you're a company and you hire people of any sort of size, you know, a f you have

five people, maybe you won't have this problem. But if you get a hundred people, all of the sort of ills of society eventually are going to come to you. So companies sort of have to act as if this is something that's out there, this does happen, what are we going to do about it when it does happen. Have you noticed in your conversations with these women and evolution of sexual harassment or is it in fact very much the same as it was you were referring to

the Madmen era? Does it still take the same forms? Yeah, I mean essentially the same stuff that happened in mad Men is happening now. Um, it may be different levels. Maybe your industry, it's a bit different. UM, I think sort of in news media. The stuff that happened at Fox News is not common to other news media organizations. But that doesn't mean that Fox News was just the

only place that that happened at all. And so I talked with some people who work at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commissioned and they investigate all harassment complaints, and they said that while quid pro quo statistically isn't as common as it used to be, UM, they are still dealing with pretty much everything, and they they have been dealing with everything. And I talked to a woman who was harassed in the nineteen eighties. I talked to Anita Hill,

who was harassed also in the nineteen eighties. We came forward in the nineties and I talked to women who are in their twenties who were just harassed a couple of years ago, and their stories are pretty much the same. The questions that they have are the same. The way that their employers dealt with it varied so drastically that it's not guaranteed that you're going to be at a place that takes this seriously. So I'm not really sure that we've made as many strides as we think that

we have. I want to hear more about the employers. But before getting to that, it does seem that perception has changed, though, like you were saying, we think things have improved. I think that I work in a better workplace environment, not just here but anywhere. All work is better than Madman. I mean, is that perception completely wrong or has harassment changed its form changed a little bit? Well?

So I also felt that way. I you know, I have been fortunate enough to not have been blatantly harassed at work. But I will say that when I started asking people about this, I got a flood of responses unlike anything that I have ever gotten for any other story that I've worked on, to the point where I had childhood friends, very close friends, tell me these stories. And not all of them are you know, my boss said,

sleep with me or I'm going to fire you. A lot of them were things like one woman said, you know, when she worked at her I t help desk in college, so she's you know, early twenty is the actual like fully employed full time workers, there were older men. They would come and like snap her brawn and harass her a little bit. But it was kind of minor, but she complained about it, and they just said, you know what, do you want us to fire them? We're not going

to fire them. So it's not quite necessarily, you know Joan on mad Men having to sleep with someone in order to get the promotion to become a partner. But it still happened, and that was only a few years ago, and to be clear, that's still illegal. Yes, oh yeah, oh yeah. Actually what they should have done is fired them, right, I mean, we know that, but I do think there's this perception of if you're not going as far as the most horrible thing, then it's okay. It's right legally.

There are a number of different ways that this goes, but essentially, if it is someone in a position of power, your superior, your manager or whatever, and they harass you, that is pretty much just legally, that's cut and dry. If it's coworker and coworker. It ranges whether or not you had complained about it, if you had made your boss or HR manager as someone aware of it, and it depends on exactly what it was. You know, if

it's one comment here, courts don't consider that hostile. Um. It has to be pervasive, So it has to be regularly for a while. Um, there isn't a time limit on what is a while, but it has to be, you know, not just like, Oh, I heard this off color remark and I don't like it, which I think is is good because otherwise we hear a lot of off color things and all sorts of capacities, and that

could get pretty dangerous. Becca, you refer to this earlier, but I'll ask it now if you could tell us a little bit about how some of these employers did respond to the complaints, to the actions, and what were

some good examples, what were some really lousy examples. I think one of the better examples was a woman who's an animator at a major Hollywood studio and she had been repeatedly asked out on dates to the point where when she would say no, he would still say, not just let's go for coffee, but let's go on a hot air balloon ride, and let's have a candle at dinner.

And he tricked her once into going out to dinner with him, and he said it was going to be a big group of people, and then she showed up at the restaurant it was just him, he sent her flowers and went on and on and on. So she told her manager and she herself at the time wasn't sure what she should be doing. She wasn't sure if that was allowed or not allowed, or if she was. She was like, am I blowing this out of proportion?

I don't know? And he said absolutely not. Um, he should not be doing this sort of stuff if you have expressed no interest. And so they talked to him and then it completely stopped. But he's still at that company and she doesn't necessarily work with him every day, but she does sometimes here and there and just mostly, you know, deals with it. Yeah. I think part of the problem is some people will hear that story and say,

is that harassment? I don't know? And yeah, it's comforting to hear a company say yes, right, you should not have to experience that at work, right, And they talked to him and he stopped it. And if he hadn't had stopped it, maybe they would talk to him again, or they would take some sort of formal level of punishment that they didn't have to step in and do.

So it really depends on exactly what is going on. Um, That's why I sort of liked her story so much is because in some ways it was benign and you could be confused. But also if you tell someone to stop bothering you and they still bother you, and she said he would email her all day long, every day and she just didn't feel very comfortable. You should also have someone at work be able to step in and say, actually, this isn't how you want to work, right. I mean,

she wouldn't like to be at that company. Maybe she wouldn't be there if they hadn't done anything, certainly. I mean, if somebody tries to talk to you at a bar, you know, you can either tell them buzz off or leave yourself and then you're done, right, But in office is a place people are going to continue to show up in and work in, and you have you can't just not go yeah, well, and this was like her

first big job at a major, major studio. And so this is a woman who'd her whole life wanting to be an animator, like, went to grad school, did all this sort of stuff, I think, gets there and then this happens, and what she's just going to quit? I mean, so I liked that that worked out. Well, I'm trying to think of some of the other stuff. Uh yeah, what was an example of a company not handling it? Well, what does that look like for the woman? Well, the most tragic one was a young woman just out of

law school. She got a job at a boutique litigation firm in Manhattan, and she went out to dinner with the partners and one of them made a comment that because he was paying for a dinner, she should give him a book job. She was a summer intern and felt kind of weird about it, but it was just the one comment, um, And so when the firm offered

her a job, she accepted it. She didn't think she was going to be working directly with him, but surprised they reorganized she's going to be working directly with him. And so those types of comments became her daily life almost immediately, where she was told, you know, to dress sort of scantily for her hearing so that she could be eye candy for the judge. Her body was commented

on all the time. He actually asked her to have sex with him and she said no. He told her at some point that he wasn't sure that he could recommend her for a bonus, and then they should Um, this was at their holiday party, that they should go back up to the office and talk about it. Um, they ended up having sex. It's sort of unclear to me,

based on the lawsuit, how that completely played out. And so she only worked there for three months before it got that bad that quickly, and she went to work for two days afterwards, um, which sort of blitz my mind. And then she realized she couldn't do it anymore, and she quit. She went home to Nebraska and got a job, and as soon as she got a job, she sued and the lass firm uh counter suitor for fifteen million dollars alleging all these things. They eventually dropped the counter suit.

She won a dty thousand dollars in her sexual harassment lawsuit, um, which is actually fairly low considering what had happened to her. Yeah, hearing you tell the story, it was interesting to hear you say when he made that first remark that she thought it was kind of weird. I'm using air quotes because that's very weird. Weird. Yeah, like, yeah, that is not normal from someone you work with, especially to a

summer intern. Yeah, you know, it's it's to anybody, right, Well, and you know it's it's it's been hard reporting this because I just want people to tell me what their experiences were and what their thought process was at the time. And oftentimes these women have now in hindsight than like

what was I thinking? What was I doing? But she had never had a job before, she was coming from the South, had never lived in New York before, not that New Yorkers talked like that at all, but like everything is new to her, Like this is her first summer job, She's going to be a lawyer. This is just some afterwork dinner drink saying she's totally offended but

doesn't really know what to do about it. All happens when the our and potential of every employee and leader in your workforce is released, and corn Ferry can get you there by aligning your people to your strategy, attracting, developing, engaging, and rewarding them to reach new heights. With corn Ferry, you get a partner who truly understands people, leadership, and the new landscape of work. A partner who knows how to take your business up. Learn more at corn Ferry

dot com slash up. Well, I wanted to ask you, Claire because I know that. Um, in addition to your conversations with these women, you've also been working on some ancillary material, including studies and examinations as to why women don't speak up and and the psychology behind that, and some of the professional issues as well. Can you tell

us a little bit about that. Yeah, I mean, this is I think a very benign and honest question that people have whenever someone comes forward, because when you if you think about the stories that you've heard in the news, it's always Let's take Anita Health, for example, came forward in the harassment that she was alleging happened in the eighties. She had never said anything publicly at the time. It turned out that she had told her friends, which actually

helped her story very much, but she didn't come forward. Then. Gretchen Carlson clearly had been experiencing this sort of stuff for a while. Megan Kelly has just come forward and said exactly what happened to her with Roger Ailes ten years ago. And so there is this natural reaction to like, well, why if this is so awful, didn't you do something about this? I would do something about this. I would definitely,

I would quit. I would report this, I would you know whatever, And sometimes that's use to discredit people when they come forward, and sometimes it's just a really honest question.

And so um I started talking to psychologists, and there's a very good study in two thousand one for these psychologists interviewed women about what they would do if they were sexually harassed in a job interview, and they said, I would get really mad, and I would refuse to answer the questions, and I wouldn't accept the job, and all the sort of stuff. And then they actually harassed them in uh joh interview situation. The psychologist didn't they hired someone to do it, but you know, he asked

them questions like do you find yourself sexually desirable? Do you think it's important for women to wear bras to work? Which was a bizarre question, but that's the type of weird stuff people say, I guess, do you have a boyfriend? In what they thought were real job interviews, And every single woman answered the questions and sat through the entire job interview. And then later when they asked them about it,

is said they weren't angry. What they felt instead was fear, so they just were trying to get out of the situation just sort of survive it, I suppose. So the theory behind why people might not report it is that they're just scared. Yeah, essentially, um, and it seems reasonable and also something we've been talking about before. You don't really know what to do, You don't know what counts it's harassment, you don't know what recourse you have. That

all seems like reasonable reasons that people wouldn't come forward. Yeah, And then you know, once you're out of the situation and the fear has sort of dissipated a little bit, then you sort of think it through and think sort of the woman who was asked out all the time, You know, am I making a big deal out of this? I don't even know? Or if it is your boss or something like that, what are the career ramifications of me trying to say anything? Well, do I work at

a company that will take this seriously? Is this person in charge of the entire company or news organization or um. In the case of the horse farm, he his wife owned a horse farm. So and stuff like that. We've all sat through really terribly produced videos about how not to sexually harass people. That's something else that you looked

at right, yeah, and doing this story. I the first thing that came to mind was the fact that I've sat through so many quote unquote compliance videos and I've never understood necessarily what their point is, because I figure, if you're someone who's inclined to do this sort of stuff, sitting through a slide show isn't going to change you, and I shouldn't do that anymore. I can't just grab

people I work with. I had no idea, thanks slide show. Um. And then if you are not inclined to do it, you already sort of know that, and so what is this necessarily doing? Um. Some of it is very good. It's educational in terms of you know what the actual policies are, how you can come forward if something happens to you, here's the hotline to call or whatever. But when I started talking to lawyers employment lawyers, they said again again, well, the point of these videos or training

courses isn't necessarily to stop the harassment. It's too prove that they have told all of their employees what the law is. So it's more legal compliance risk management than it is actually like, hey, we're going to make sure that no one in our company grabs no one else in the company. And so if the company is taking this position where they are doing this to protect themselves. Now that we know this, that also makes it really hard to want to come forward, Like whose interests does

the company have in mind? Yeah, well, and it depends on where you work, right, So if you work at a company that you know, the Hollywood Studio that it took the woman's complaints seriously, she trusted her manager to actually do something, and that didn't come from the compliance video.

That came from the fact that she knew her manager, She knew the sort of atmosphere of where she worked, you know, what they valued, what they didn't, and she felt comfortable coming forward, whereas maybe if you had worked at you know, Fox News. It seems like there were a number of women who didn't come forward for a very long time because they didn't feel that their complaints would be taken seriously. You know, Fox has the same no tolerance policy for harassment, the same hotline to call.

All that sort of stuff is in place, but you have to actually feel that that is going to happen if you come forward. Well, thank you so much for coming on and talking to us. This was really interesting and at times sad, but I hope that we all learned something. So talking to Claire was depressing. Yes, sexual harassment still happened, happens in all types of jobs and in ways that are clearly appalling, and in many ways

no different than what was happening ten thirty years ago. Yeah, and the only maybe one good difference is that now people are talking about it, which is what they're going to have to continue to do. Yes, we're all going to have to continue to do it. And now for some lighter fare, it's time for half big takes, happy fake takes. Sam, what is your not quite fully formed opinion this week? All right, So, when you're walking through like a crowd of people, or if you sort of

come to a near collision with somebody, what do you say? Um, you might say excuse me, or you might say pardon me. I find those to be kind of passive aggressive. I never quite clear if you're saying that in an apologetic fashion or and more of a like excuse me, like you deserve the right of way. They are like you need to excuse me because you a command, excuse me, pardon me? Yea. So I really feel like all you

can say is I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I was looking at my phone and not paying attention to the world around me. That's right. Yeah, Well, I thought i'd try to do a positive half big take this week. And my half fag take is that I hear a lot of complaining about like meaningless workplace chit chat, such as asking how your weekend was. And you know what, I try to make a point to ask people how

their weekend was because I care. I don't like, I don't know, I care means, but I enjoy that conversation. I think it's a nice way to talk to somebody. You can learn a little something about them. Yeah, we sit really close to each other here at Bloomberg, so you know, ask someone about not just how they're doing. And this has been half pig takes, halfa takes. Thank you for listening to game Plan. You can find me

on two witter. I'm at rs Greenfield and I'm at Sam Grobart And if you like this show, you can head on over to iTunes and rate and review and subscribe. Game Plan is produced by Liz Smith and Magnus Henriksson. The head of Bloomberg Podcasts is Alec McCabe and we'll see you next week. I get the most from your people and send your business soaring with corn Ferry. From executive search to talent strategy, leadership development, rewards and succession planning.

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