RURAL ROUTES/Margot Ford McMillen

Help Finally is At Hand for Harassed Women

The #metoo movement has gotten traction now, and gone international. Globally, people are reporting harassment to bosses and, wonder of wonders, being taken seriously. And it’s not just sexual harassment. Women are asking co-workers about pay scale and demanding equal pay for equal work. The pay gap in the White House has been found to be 87 cents for women compared to a dollar for men. And Goldman Sachs has done an internal investigation that showed, in the UK, women made 56% of a man’s check.

Solutions to these inequities have been slow in coming, but bosses and judges are beginning to take note. Women are reaching out to each other and to their male colleagues and demanding equity. There is even a new movement to pass the ERA — to put equal rights for women into the constitution where it belongs. First introduced by Alice Paul in 1921, the amendment is simple: Section 1. No political, civil, or legal disabilities or inequalities on account of sex or on account of marriage, unless applying equally to both sexes, shall exist within the United States or any territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof. Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

That’s it.

Several years ago, a young woman asked me what she could do about men making passes at work. At parties. On the street. What could she do about cat calls? Suggestive comments, gestures, car honking, wolf whistles when she walked past construction sites? She was, and still is, a modest dresser, soft-spoken, smart as a whip. What a shame that all the men saw was a young, pretty lady with a great body. Made me sad but, truthfully I had no advice at all. I had suffered through the same thing when I was her age and I sort of thought it was part of life. “Buy glasses and wear them.” I said, passing it off. So lame!

And, of course, it didn’t work. She bought the glasses, wore them and the harassment continued. So she took on a boyfriend, that helped, and she learned to avoid all the other guys that might have been her friends.

In those days—and until just a few years ago—there was no place to go with a simple harassment charge unless it became rape. If a woman was raped, and went to the police, and then to the hospital for confirmation … if the hospital had a rape kit to save the semen, and if they sent it to a lab, and if there were matches from other rapes, there might be a chance to take the perpetrator to court and even get a conviction. Harassment, however, ended with a woman’s feeling of shame and embarrassment. She blamed herself and avoided the men that bothered her. “Boys will be boys, so just get used to it” was a common response to ladies that complained.

One study claims that 81% of women have been harassed in their lifetimes, and that sounds about right. Fortunately, these days, there are protections popping up to help.

To start with, we have recognized that harassment is only partly about biology and the need for sex. More important, to the harasser, is the desire for power. Interestingly, academic studies are pointing to the need for male bonding as one of the reasons for harassment. Young fellows, hanging out together, or old fellows taking a lunch break, may entertain themselves by following women, making lewd comments, seeing how far they can get.

As we learn more, and discover reasons behind the behavior, harassers will defend themselves by blaming the victims and there have been troubling repercussions. Women can be bullies just as men can — but, on the whole, this is a giant step forward for humankind, probably the most important social movement of our young century. If we can teach each others to abandon harassment based on sex, we can learn to reject harassment based on race, ethnic identity, country of origin.

Articles in men’s magazines have pointed it out: Humans are able to change ourselves. Men can learn to step back when they feel the urge to grab someone or steal a kiss. Male sons can be raised to respect the women around them, no matter how much biology calls out to be assertive. In the words of Todd Schuett, writing for the on-line journal The Elephant, “I pushed too fast and hard, and I learned to be more gentle, but there’s a lot of anxiety and fear around approaching a woman, even more anxiety to ask her out, and then there’s the potential humiliation of rejection …”

So, yeah, it’s a scary business, this sexuality we’re all born with, but we can rein it in and act civilized. Years ago, I didn’t have any real advice for my young friend, but these days, there is help.

Margot Ford McMillen farms near Fulton, Mo., and co-hosts “Farm and Fiddle” on sustainable ag issues on KOPN 89.5 FM in Columbia, Mo. Her latest book is The Golden Lane: How Missouri Women Gained the Vote and Changed History. Email: margotmcmillen@gmail.com.

From The Progressive Populist, May 1, 2018

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