I’ve been a fighter my whole life. When someone tells me I can’t do something, I do it better. When someone has called me a blond bimbo, I’ve studied harder. When I had to get into world-class shape to compete as a short girl in the Miss America pageant, I willed myself to learn how to run (and I was a fat kid who dreaded running one block!), working up to six miles a day with my toes bleeding. When my own grandfather told me I was too short to be Miss America, I said “No, I’m not” and empowered myself through research. I found out that the very first Miss America in 1921 had been two inches shorter than me. The fire in my belly, which urges me to push and pull and grapple and claw and fight to the bitter end, has been with me since day one. I don’t know anything else. I have always believed and fought for the American dream.
But there’s something else, too, and maybe you can identify with this. I didn’t just want to be driven; I wanted to restore my sense of joy too, after what happened to me. In the early days after my story broke, I felt insecure and self-conscious, and my natural instinct was to keep my head down. I was vulnerable.
Less than two weeks after the first news reports came out, I was scheduled to take my daughter to a Justin Bieber concert at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Given the circumstances, it would not be an understatement to say that I wasn’t looking forward to attending a big public event. But to my delight, it couldn’t have been more uneventful—which was incredibly empowering. While I wasn’t sure what to expect, it ended up proving to me that I could leave the house, move on with my life, sing out loud, and not be fearful. While I didn’t know every Bieber song, I have to say that he gives one heck of a concert. And on that night—that special night—I was liberated. Being with my teenage daughter, seeing the joy on her face, dancing and singing at the top of our lungs, I knew that life would go on. Not only that, but I would triumph. I could be happy.
“What do you want to be when you grow up?” We ask our children this question all the time. There’s something profound and almost magical about those early dreams. For many of us, our first expression of what we want to “be” sticks. In effect, the dream comes true. When you’ve wanted something and prepared for it your whole life, you’re on top of the world when you achieve it.
Now imagine having it all taken away, in an instant, arbitrarily, because your boss or someone you work with makes an inappropriate advance. You complain; you go through the channels as you’ve been told to do. But the channels (usually HR) fail to protect you. There is retaliation; you’re fired, laid off, or forced to quit. And just like that, your career—the one you’ve been planning and training for over all those years—is over. You’re labeled a troublemaker, blackballed in your industry, and you have absolutely no recourse. The culture is stronger than the law.
Sadly, I know this to be commonplace because I’ve spoken to many, many women who’ve told exactly this story. Blindsided early in their careers, they were heartbroken. And I was heartbroken for them. Listening on the phone to a young entrepreneur who told me through tears, “My dream job was a nightmare,” I had no words to comfort her. After nearly a year of harassment by a lascivious colleague whose words and antics everyone just laughed off, she took a complaint to HR.
After that, she said, everything changed. No one would speak to her; she had to live with resentment every day, even as she put on a cheerful demeanor to do her job. She told me she was eventually pushed out and is still unable to find another job. The interviews initially go well, and then it’s like the prospective employer finds out she did “that thing”—sticking up for herself and filing a complaint after being wronged—and now she’s “one of those.” I was outraged on her behalf. Her young career was sidetracked solely because, as I’ve seen time and again, the company seemed to want to protect the harasser more than the woman who complained, and so many others stood by and let it happen. It’s incomprehensible to me why we sideline the people who stand up for themselves, while making excuses for those whose words and actions are morally corrupt. It seems completely upside down. Supporting a woman who finally decides to come forward makes the workplace better for everyone.
My mind goes back to my first job in television. It’s a very competitive industry, and I experienced my share of rejections before I landed a job. It was for a local station, and the pay was less than $20,000 a year, but I felt as if I’d won the lottery. There was only one small blip in getting hired. When my future boss read my application and saw that I’d been Miss America, he told me that he wasn’t sure if he could hire me, because he said his wife didn’t even allow him to watch the pageant. But I persevered and sent my tape to him overnight anyway. Luckily, my grades, skills, and TV reel won out, and he was a good boss and mentor.
I truly believe that he was the rule, and not the exception. In fact, most of the men I’ve worked for and with over my career would not dream of treating women disrespectfully—they would, in fact, stand up for them if they saw others doing so. Unfortunately, the Neanderthals in our workplaces are often people of power and influence who are able to get away with their behavior because so many are afraid to challenge them. For them, young women are prey, and they don’t care if their abusive behaviors destroy these women’s lives.
“If this hadn’t happened to me, I’d be running a top firm by now,” Sophia said to me, describing how she’d been harassed by her boss and fired twenty years earlier. “I’ve struggled in every job since. That man killed my dream.”
Her dream was to have a career in advertising, and Sophia was thrilled when she got a job at a New York agency. She was twenty-three years old, an overachiever with several internships under her belt. Sophia described herself as upbeat and jovial, able to get along in a work environment that was relaxed and easygoing. “I was not a person who couldn’t take a joke,” she said, even though some of the behavior harkened back to an era she thought was over—such as hiring strippers to perform for the boss’s birthday.
On her first business trip, she was happy to be invited to have a cocktail with two top executives from her firm. But she says she wasn’t prepared for what happened over drinks. At one point, she said, they started to write a list on a cocktail napkin of the things she could get in exchange for sexual favors, such as a raise and an office with a window. Sophia was uncomfortable, but she thought they were joking, so she played along.
Then new management took over, and was not happy to hear the stories about the sexualized culture—and began questioning people about it. Suddenly, Sophia found herself in the role of witness, and she says many of the guys in the office turned against her. So did her boss. In spite of her impressive work record, she says he put her on probation and then fired her.
Sophia was devastated. She hired a lawyer and filed a complaint with the EEOC, but the outcome was discouraging. She ended up with a small amount of money and a career she says could not be salvaged. Today she talks of the “ripple effect” of sexual harassment. “I feel as if I have this terrible scar,” she said all these years later. “If employers find out, they won’t want me.”
Sophia’s collapsing self-esteem is consistent with findings of a 2011 study published in the Society and Mental Health Journal that sexual harassment early in the career has long-term effects on depressive symptoms in adulthood. In Sophia’s case, long after she achieved some success in her field and even started her own company, she remained stuck in a mentality that she’s still not good enough. Having been disposed of so unfairly and randomly, she says she’s been constantly on the lookout for other employers to throw her out “like trash” too.
“Why didn’t you just leave?” This was said to me, and I’ve heard it said to others. During the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump commented to the reporter Kirsten Powers of USA Today that if his daughter Ivanka were sexually harassed, “I’d like to think she would find another career, or find another company.” Powers wrote, “His reply was startling, even by Trumpian standards.”
The following day, while appearing on CBS This Morning, Eric Trump was asked by Charlie Rose about what his father had said. Eric defended him: “I think what he’s saying is, Ivanka is a strong, powerful woman, she wouldn’t allow herself to be objected [sic] to it…”
So there you have it—two statements, two myths: One, that women who are harassed should just find another job or career. Two, that strong women don’t get harassed.
I decided to react to the statements and tweeted:
Sad in 2016 we’re still victim blaming women.
Trust me I’m strong.
It was one of the most retweeted tweets I’ve ever sent. But when asked again to clarify his comments in a Washington Post interview, Donald Trump seemed perplexed by the uproar. “I’m surprised people are talking about that,” he said.
Well, people were talking about it because those two statements were from the Dark Ages. It’s easy to say, “Just leave” if your father is wealthy and powerful, and can get you a job in any industry. What about a woman who supports herself and her family, and doesn’t have the option to just go elsewhere? What about a woman who loves her career, and doesn’t want to give it up? What about a woman who has followed the American dream and worked and studied and busted her ass for years to achieve success in her field and deserves to be there? It’s also ludicrous to say that being strong shields you from harassment. Trust me, most of the women I’ve talked to are strong, and being strong or weak does not determine whether or not you will be sexually harassed!
One of the strong women I’m speaking of is Fredericka, who had a good job in law enforcement, and whose dream was to someday get into the FBI. She excelled in her work and was physically fit and strong. She was going places. But that was before she says her boss got drunk at a company party, isolating her on a back patio, kissing her and propositioning her. Fredericka says she pushed him away and told him that she wasn’t interested in sleeping with him. But he wouldn’t stop. Later, she says he cornered her in his office, kissing her and rubbing his erection against her. Like I said, she was strong and she fought back. But he was her supervisor and he held all the power. After that, “he made my life a living hell,” she told me. In the end, Fredericka decided to leave. But that meant giving up the profession that she loved because she was stigmatized and blackballed. She told me she is haunted by the unnecessary agony that took away her career. For her, and so many others, being strong isn’t enough.
So many women these days are striving for a new kind of American dream in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and math). But discouragingly, in a study of women in these fields, the Atlantic found that women are literally being harassed out of science. One of those women is Nathalie Gosset. Nathalie, who for twelve years worked for the University of Southern California’s Alfred E. Mann Institute for Biomedical Engineering, had advanced quickly in her career to become a senior director of marketing and technology innovation evaluation. She loved her job, and as the only woman in management, she did not feel undercut in any way. For Nathalie, it was all about the team, and her team was outstanding. There was never a hint that any of the men had a problem with their female leader. “My brain and communication skills were the great equalizers,” she said. “The men working for me saw me as a leader, and I inspired a sense of equality. It was all about what our team could do.”
Then a new boss came to town. In the beginning, Nathalie didn’t have much interaction with him. But after the first year, he held more frequent meetings in which Nathalie says his language was shockingly vulgar. She claims he openly talked about his sex life in group meetings, making her cringe. She noted that her male coworkers seemed uncomfortable at first too, but eventually somehow got used to it. “It’s the contamination factor,” she said. “If the boss is loose and vulgar, it gives permission for others. I could feel the culture shifting.”
Nathalie said that in the beginning, she felt that she “just needed to be quiet, because I thought eventually he’d run out of things to say, and stop.” But he didn’t. She finally felt she had to say something, and reached out to HR—the proper thing to do. Unfortunately, she says, the response was less than supportive. The HR representative wondered about Nathalie’s motives and perceptions, and even asked her, “Are you sure it was him?”
Nathalie was flummoxed. Was she sure it was him? That seemed to defy logic. Nathalie also says the HR representative wondered aloud if Nathalie had “unresolved father-daughter issues.”
After the HR report, she says her boss began to shut her out, refusing to speak to her, making it hard for Nathalie to do her job. She recalls that he also came into her office several times and threatened her and rallied the other employees against her.
Soon after, Nathalie was told that her job function had been eliminated, and she was presented with termination papers. She was out the door in just ten minutes after twelve years.
This becomes not only a story of injustice to one woman, but also a depressing story for all women who work in STEM. Nathalie had always been active in encouraging young women to go into this field. She still believed in it, but what could she tell them now? What would she tell her own college-age daughter?
In the months after she was fired, Nathalie felt traumatized, and suffered panic attacks and sleepless nights. She frequently burst into tears. She felt crushed by the unfairness of the situation—her career derailed because of a guy who she says couldn’t handle the fact that a woman stood up to him.
In October 2016, Nathalie hired Lisa Bloom and filed a lawsuit claiming sexual harassment, workplace discrimination, and wrongful termination. Her former boss has not issued a statement, but USC released this statement challenging Nathalie’s claim, stating, “The allegations in the case of Nathalie Gosset are without merit. The University will defend itself and those named in the suit vigorously.” The entire legal process is still ongoing as of this writing.
Some stories of women’s success in STEM have gone unreported until recently—like the story of Katherine Johnson, one of the African American female mathematicians at NASA featured in the movie Hidden Figures. When we think our challenges are impossible to overcome, Johnson and her female colleagues show us that nothing is impossible. These women worked at NASA in the 1960s, when their division was racially segregated and they had little chance of advancement. But Johnson proved herself to be so brilliant that the astronaut John Glenn relied on her as the “human computer” to make sure all of the calculations for reentry into the earth’s atmosphere were correct during his first solo spaceflight orbiting the earth. In 2016, when Hidden Figures was nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards, the actresses who starred in the film wheeled Johnson, then ninety-eight, onto the stage. For that moment, a female African American scientist from the 1960s was a rock star. While I watched with my children I was incredibly moved and elated to see her receive this long-overdue recognition. Now, I can only hope that we keep that image alive, so that young women today can take their rightful places in the world of science and fully realize the American dream.
Harassment and discrimination go hand in hand, and nowhere is this more exemplified than in tech industries. The young male culture of the tech world can make it particularly hard for older workers to gain a foothold, and this is especially true for women.
But the problem is pervasive in all types of workplaces, not just tech. The National Bureau of Economic Research conducted a massive field experiment, involving more than forty thousand résumés and responses in a variety of fields. The study showed that older women get fewer callbacks than older men, as well as fewer than younger men and women. The study’s authors, David Neumark and Ian Burn of the University of California, Irvine, and Patrick Button of Tulane University, designed forty thousand fake résumés that accurately presented typical candidates at various ages and levels of experience. There were three age brackets: twenty-nine to thirty-one, forty-nine to fifty-one, and sixty-four to sixty-six. The researchers sent applications to jobs in four categories in a dozen cities, in response to online ads. “Workers” age forty-nine to fifty-one got 18 percent fewer callbacks than those age twenty-nine to thirty-one. Those who were sixty-four to sixty-six got 35 percent fewer callbacks. But even the middle group seemed to have aged out—when the candidates were women. In one study example of a women-only job search, those who were age forty-nine to fifty-one applying for administrative jobs received 29 percent fewer callbacks than those aged twenty-nine to thirty-one. In other categories in which the genders were separated, older men got many more callbacks than older women.
In the tech industry, where the numbers of women are actually on the decline over the last decade, combining age discrimination (worse for women) with sex discrimination can mean a near-total shutout. That’s what Claudia says she experienced at age forty-eight. When the family engineering business where she’d worked for many years was sold to a thirty-year-old man, he didn’t even try to hide the fact that he was seeking to hire younger people—not just because they were cheaper, but because he thought they were better, more creative, and more in line with the type of company he wanted. When Claudia brought him the résumés of experienced people with exceptional credentials, he rejected them, telling her, “I want someone young.”
She watched this boss push out several other women who had apparently reached their “sell-by” dates, but she was still unprepared when it happened to her. Since she was an at-will employee, she didn’t believe that she had a good legal case to fight her termination. She just left, feeling deeply demoralized.
“I was raised by a hardworking mother who, with the exception of vacation days, only missed two days of work in twenty years,” Claudia said. “I followed her lead and became a strong, independent woman. I was happy and upbeat. I had so many things to be grateful for—a home, a wonderful husband, a mom who doted on me, a job I loved. This incident turned my life upside down.”
According to a PBS report, older women now make up half of the long-term unemployed. So what is the definition of “older”? Joanna Lahey, an economist and expert on age discrimination, says it can begin as young as age thirty-five for women. “There have been several studies done where companies are asked, ‘Well, why do you think other people might discriminate against older workers?’ And reasons given include worries that they’re not good at technology, that they don’t have computer skills. There are worries that they’re not active, that they’re slow, that they’re not willing to embrace change.”
Lahey noted that women are far less likely to sue for age discrimination than middle-aged white male workers. But it’s worth it for women to start making their case. If “aging out” starts at thirty-five for women, someone has to put on the brakes.
Keep in mind that age discrimination is just one of a long list of gender inequalities that women experience, both in and out of the workplace. In fact, a study released in October 2016 found that the United States ranked thirty-second in a global index of gender equality, below Kazakhstan and Algeria. That is unacceptable, proving we have a lot of work to do!
One way to do that work is to inspire young people to fight for equality and respect. The impact of sexual harassment on young women just starting out in their careers can be dramatic and lasting. Juliana, now in her forties, has achieved success and satisfaction in her career in public service, but she has never forgotten the experience of being a vulnerable twenty-one-year-old subjected to sexual harassment in her first job working for a studio executive. Going into that job, she remembered, “I was on top of the world. I thought I was going to conquer the movie business.” Instead, she was demoralized and intimidated by her powerful boss, who would call her a dufus and tell her, “You don’t think; that’s my job.” Furthermore, his overt sexism and vulgar references to her body—“You have the best tits in Hollywood”—made her so miserable that she finally quit. “What happened to me in those two years shaped my view of the world,” she said. “I never got over it. It’s always been in the back of my mind. My optimism was shaken to the core.”
Juliana wishes we would see these young women like herself, listen to them and understand that their worldviews are being shaped by these experiences. “They’re at their most vulnerable, and the power differential is great,” she said, emphasizing that sexual harassment is not about sex but power. “The disparity of power in our culture makes the issue worse,” she said. “People are desperate for employment, and it makes them vulnerable.”
When Juliana was trying to figure out what to do in her own situation, she went to two lawyer friends, a woman and a man, for advice. Her woman friend told her not to do anything if she wanted to continue to work in the business. Reporting the harassment would ruin her. Her male friend had the opposite advice: “Go for it.” Later she better understood why her female friend advised caution. “As a woman, she was already preconditioned to stay safe, keep it under wraps, protect oneself, take it and move on. Whereas the male lawyer was like, ‘Go get ’em tiger,’ because that’s what men are trained to do—take on the conflict.”
She views what she experienced, although easily referred to as sexual harassment, as “actually a type of psychological warfare in which the only possible winner was the guy with the power. The ability to manipulate people is key to being a successful sexual harasser. If you aren’t able to make your victim feel that she is responsible for the behavior, that somehow, someway, the victim encouraged the contact, the touching, the comments, engaged the harasser, then the harasser isn’t really that good. That’s why most victims walk away in shame and blame themselves, and why most victims don’t ever report the harassment. Instead, they think, If only I didn’t respond with a smile, if only I had said something in a firm tone objecting to the vile behavior, if only, if only, if only, if only…”
Juliana believes it is important to teach and encourage women to speak up. But her public service work has also given her tremendous compassion for all those who don’t feel as if they have the option of quitting or speaking out because they need to keep their jobs.
In advocating for change, Juliana challenges us to think about what we want for our daughters and the women of their generation, who enter the workplace with the same level of excitement and optimism she once had. Are we willing to accept that they too will be permanently harmed by people in power sexually harassing them just because they can?
If adult professional women have a hard time being respected and believed, it’s much harder for young women on college campuses. I want to speak to those young women now. For many of you, your independent lives start in college, where you can find yourselves navigating some pretty tough terrain. It’s both a training ground for adult life and a setting that can be dangerous. As parents, educators, and students, and as a society that cares about our young people, we must fight together to change this.
I can still remember the wonderful sense of freedom I felt when I left home for college at Stanford University. California was a long way away from Minnesota. And even though it wasn’t my first time away from home—I had spent all those summers at the Aspen Music Festival when I played the violin—college was the first time I could really be myself, away from my parents. It’s an incredibly important time for young people as they learn to spread their wings, independent of parental oversight. Like most college students, I sometimes tested my limits and did things my parents probably wouldn’t have always condoned, but that’s part of growing up. I took risks because like so many other young people, I, too, thought I was invincible. To a certain extent, that’s what college is all about: learning to live as an adult, sometimes making mistakes and picking yourself up again. But to the young people reading this and to their parents, know that it’s also a time to be aware and prepared.
Kids today face so many additional challenges when they go off to college than kids in my generation did. Public stories about campus assault, fraternity parties that end in death, and social media shaming campaigns against young women are scary indicators that we are sending our kids to places that may not have the appropriate safety nets to catch them if they fall.
A large study released by the Department of Justice in 2016 shows that campus sexual assault is a major problem. The DOJ polled thousands of students in nine universities about their experiences with this issue. The survey included colleges and universities in different parts of the country, both two-and four-year schools. The results were astounding. One in five undergraduate women said they had experienced sexual assault, and only 12.5 percent of students who said they were raped actually reported it. Who is not shocked by these statistics?
One young woman told me of an experience that seemed all too typical. “When I was a sophomore in college (nineteen at the time),” she related, “I was sleeping on a couch with a couple of my college girlfriends after a party, and I woke up to discover a man with his hand shoved down my pants. I was so completely terrified and shocked that I did not realize I was awake, and thought at first that I must be in the middle of a nightmare. I could not see the man, as the room was dark, but I could feel his large hand when I reached down to pull his arm off my small body. I suddenly jerked up to realize that the man had sneaked into the room I was sleeping in, and had laid his body flat on the ground in order to reach over the couch on which I was sleeping and grab my private areas, without anyone seeing him, including me. The man had shoved his arm under all my covers and blankets, pulled up my shirt and pants, and assaulted me—all while I was asleep and did not feel his presence until it was too late. When I awoke, he jumped up to his feet and quietly ran out of the room without closing the door behind him.”
She told me that she kept silent about the assault for three years. She says she felt intimidated. She was studying at a school with a primarily male student body, and didn’t want to call attention to herself in this way. But a few months before graduating, she finally decided to report her assault to the university. “By going public about your mistreatment, you gave me the courage to take the steps to report my mistreatment,” she told me. “I held my head high as I sat through meetings with the university’s lawyers, multiple Title IX staff, and representatives from university fraternities (that was a tough one) who questioned my motives for coming forward. I did not sue anyone or any institution, nor did I want to. I merely wanted to go on record about my assault on the campus of a school where I was not the first young woman to have her private parts touched by a predator.”
It’s not surprising that she was so reluctant to report her assault. According to organizations that study this issue, young women in these situations fear that they will be grilled about their own behaviors, and ultimately blamed with questions like these:
What were you wearing?
How much were you drinking?
Did you flirt with him?
Were you walking alone?
Are you sure you said no?
They’re asked, “What did you expect, dressed like that?” They’re challenged, “Why were you at that party drinking—didn’t you know what could happen?” It’s confusing and demeaning. And parents might not always be sympathetic. “How could you put yourself in that situation?” they might ask. “I thought you had a good head on your shoulders.”
We can tell our daughters to be careful. We can beg them to be careful. We can even give them strategies to avoid sexual assault. But these numbers wash over us in an overwhelming wave. The hard reality is that some of our daughters will be sexually assaulted on campus. It’s a fear that eats at us. If we’re being honest, we worry about our daughters. But in my mind, we need to worry about both our daughters and our sons to change the mind-sets that create victimizers, victims, and silent bystanders.
My daughter is a few years away from entering college, but already I’m thinking about it and trying to plant the seeds, building her confidence and self-esteem so she’ll be prepared to stand on her own. But our advice to our kids also needs to be more specific, to address the realities they may face on college campuses. We have to prepare our daughters like the other warriors in this book—with real tools and weapons in their arsenals. If my daughter was about to leave for college today, here’s the advice I would give her:
Know who your friends are: It’s easy to assume that a campus is just a big family, and everyone is equally trustworthy. But you can’t let your guard down merely because you’re in a group of randomly affiliated people who happen to go to your school. Be sure you have your friend posse, a group of people you can trust to be on your side in every situation.
Take steps to protect yourself: Let’s face it: anyone who’s ever been to college knows that drinking alcohol is a major part of the social life. But imbibing can also become a major factor in campus sexual assault. Make some rules: Never take a drink from a stranger. Don’t leave a drink unattended. Create a protective net before you go to a party; establish a “safe word” with friends, who can help if necessary, and get you out of a situation if you feel that you’ve had too much to drink, or are being threatened. It’s a word that you can say to a friend who will recognize it as a call for help. It’s a word you can text to a friend who will know you aren’t safe. It’s a word you can call or text to your parents—even if they are far away—to let them know something isn’t right.
Stay in touch: For many of us, going off to college is the first time we live away from home for an extended period. Sure, we may have gone to summer camps, but college is different. No camp counselors to look after you, or parents to come home to every night. This is why I believe it’s so important for parents to establish a relationship of trust with their kids, to encourage them to always be honest with us, even if the news they’re telling us isn’t good. I believe that kids are safer when their parents are in the loop. Hopefully, you have this kind of relationship, or can start to build it now. (Parents, this trust building starts young. See chapter 9 for more on this topic.) For the kids now away from home, here’s my advice. As much as you want to assert yourself and be independent, keep in touch with your family and your roots. Make that weekly phone call. Use your parents as a sounding board. Let them help you problem-solve issues that arise for you, not just in the classroom, but on campus too. There’s something about just talking to Mom or Dad that can remind us about how we grew up, and what our expectations have been.
If you’re a student reading this and rolling your eyes because it sounds like typical stuff that parents say to keep their kids close, let me add a little perspective. We never stop being our parents’ children, even when we get older. And their advice can mean a lot; I know I feel that way about my parents. It’s funny how struggle and crisis can crystallize the meaning of this most important relationship.
That was especially crucial for me in the spring of 2016. I needed guidance and support like never before. I can still see myself sitting on my back hallway bench in the dark of the night when the call came in. Both of my parents were on the line. They wanted to let me know they were in my court—that no matter what, they stood with and beside me as I was contemplating jumping off my cliff. Even though I was approaching fifty, my parents’ support and advice meant something. Sure, I was adept at making decisions on my own. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t gain wisdom and courage from those irreplaceable stalwarts in my life.
Find a passion beyond partying: Getting involved with organizations and pursuing meaningful projects will make you stronger and better able to cope in social situations. It will ground you, and increase your sense of worth. Being more involved in a variety of activities can also keep you out of trouble, and create new friendship groups, more people you can trust and lean on if necessary. Choose activities that empower you and give you a forum to speak out about issues you believe in. Always ask how you can be your best self.
These are tools that can help on a personal level. But we also have to ask what colleges and the larger society can do to make campuses safe for our children. I believe that such an improvement begins with a no-tolerance policy for sexual harassment. Experts have said sexual harassment on campus is a gateway crime to assault. Research by Cornell’s ILR School shows that public harassment—vulgar words and displays directed mostly at girls—has an emotional impact that is similar to sexual assault. It leads to the same kind of feelings of low self-esteem and depression, and it also makes girls feel less safe. It fills them with self-doubt about what they wear, where they go, and what they do on campus. Hollaback!, an organization devoted to ending public sexual harassment, surveyed college students, and found that 20 percent of them said harassment caused an inability to concentrate in class, while 23 percent said that harassment prevented attendance in class. That’s awful! It obviously has an impact on these young lives, and we need to start taking it seriously, long before these behaviors make their way into the workplace.
Some colleges are stepping up and creating mandatory sexual harassment training for students. For example, the University of Kansas requires all students to take sexual harassment training. Its firm policy states: “The University of Kansas is committed to a safe environment where every community member (students, faculty, and staff) can pursue their education without interference. Sexual violence is one of the most unreported crimes on college campuses. Because the University is committed to preventing sexual violence, a mandatory Sexual Harassment Education Training is required annually for all students.” Failure to complete the training by the deadline results in a hold on a student’s record that will prevent enrollment for the following year.
This training is a fantastic idea. Programs like this send a clear message that any form of sexual harassment will not be tolerated. That’s how the culture begins to change: when institutions make it their policy to fight harassment. I’d like to see sexual harassment training on every college campus. And this training should not be just abstract preaching; it should really show students what harassment looks like and how it feels. I highly recommend you watch a series of short films called #ThatsHarassment, produced by the actor/director David Schwimmer, Israeli American director Sigal Avin, and Mazdack Rassi of Milk Studios. The idea originated with Avin, who had produced a similar series in Israel. “When she called and wanted to see if something like it would resonate in the United States, it was a no brainer,” Schwimmer told me. “It was perfect timing”—with so much talk about sexual harassment. “I knew we had to act fast to get these made.”
The films are some of the most striking and realistic interpretations of sexual harassment I’ve seen. They consist of scenes that typify everyday harassment—in a doctor’s office, by a boss, by a coworker, by a politician to a journalist, by a photographer to a model—with the aim of showing what sexual harassment looks like in seemingly normal encounters. The films resonated with me. Often people tell me they don’t really understand what sexual harassment is. These videos show it in clear ways, in scenes that have a tremendous emotional impact. You can’t watch without feeling tremendous unease, disgust, and sympathy for the women.
In perhaps the most dramatic film, called The Photographer, a young model is humiliated by a photographer, clicking away as he urges her to get more sexually into the shoot, keeping up an increasingly threatening banter, ordering her to touch herself and telling her he’s sexually aroused. When he finishes, the camera pulls back to reveal a large group of people watching impassively. No one says a word. While the viewer feels agony for the mortified young woman, none of the people working on the set have a reaction. Schwimmer noted that seventy-five models auditioned for The Photographer, and every one of them had a story about something similar happening to her. It’s real.
Schwimmer told me that the reaction to the film series has been “a lot of gratitude and an enormous outpouring of people who want to share their own stories on our Facebook page. People express a desire that more be done.” Also, he said, the films allow a dialogue to be opened. He’s found that although there’s a lot of support from men, there’s also confusion. They’re not always clear why it’s sexual harassment. “We want people to talk about it and inspire a discussion.”
Schwimmer is also active in the Rape Foundation, a highly regarded organization in Los Angeles devoted to support for rape victims and sexually abused children, which is partnering with the fraternity system to educate young men. He brings a lot of passion to these issues. “It’s the way I was raised,” he said. “My parents were very active and politically strong feminists. I’m driven about using my celebrity as a man to change the culture—and to try and reach other men with the message.”
I believe that colleges must also take on the environments that allow these behaviors to flourish. That might mean challenging some of the negative elements within the Greek system (excessive partying and hazing, for example). One positive example is the Men’s Project, a six-week program at the University of Wisconsin–Madison designed to help young men redefine healthy masculinity and empower them to be more self-aware and promote gender equity.
Public events can also have a tremendous impact. It’s On Us, an effective campaign to stop sexual assault on campuses, hosts events in which survivors share their stories and prominent people speak. At an April 2017 It’s On Us event at George Mason University in Virginia, former vice president Joe Biden spoke very bluntly, addressing the men in the audience. He told them that if a woman is dead drunk, she cannot consent to sex. Young men need to hear this kind of message from adult men more often.
I want to say strongly to college women that you can be a part of this fight. Stand up for yourself! Organize Take Back the Night events. Lobby your school about offering sexual harassment training. Demand accountability when assaults happen. Expose any demeaning and dangerous practices on your campus. Use social media to assert your rights and your dignity. Be a warrior on your own campus. Do it for yourself, and for all the young women and men who will follow you.
That’s exactly what happened when the women’s soccer team at Harvard took back their power. In October 2016, the Harvard Crimson published an article reporting that the 2012 Harvard men’s soccer team had created a “scouting report” for the incoming women’s team, giving each woman a score based on her physical appearance, accompanied by a critique. For example: “She seems relatively simple and probably inexperienced sexually, so I decided missionary would be her preferred position.”
When the story came to light, the men’s soccer team was suspended for the remainder of the season. But the women’s soccer team, including some of those who had been “scouted” in 2012, had their own way of taking hold of the narrative and asserting themselves. In an open letter published in the Crimson, they fought back, with strength and dignity. The letter stated: “We have seen the ‘scouting report’ in its entirety. We know the fullest extent of its contents: the descriptions of our bodies, the numbers we were each assigned, and the comparison to each other and recruits in classes before us. This document attempts to pit us against one another, as if the judgment of a few men is sufficient to determine our worth. But, men, we know better than that. Eighteen years of soccer taught us that. Eighteen years—as successful, powerful, and undeniably brilliant female athletes—taught us that.”
Most significantly, they wrote that the men’s comments did not have the ability to take them down: “This document might have stung any other group of women you chose to target, but not us. We know as teammates that we rise to the occasion, that we are stronger together, and that we will not tolerate anything less than respect for women that we care for more than ourselves.”
I found that same fighting spirit in a blog post by a young student and intern who titled her piece “A Note from the Next Gretchen Carlson.” An aspiring journalist, she wrote, “As a green, wide-eyed student and intern, I simply didn’t know that the Old Boys’ Club and locker room feel of many workplaces was still present at the type of place I could see myself working.… I often wonder at what decade we’ll agree it’s no longer appropriate to defend degradation in the workplace. I can’t decide whether sexual harassment or the excuses made on behalf of the perpetrators is scarier to me.”
But it was her conclusion that lifted my spirits and heartened me about the next generation. “Even as I fear,” she wrote, “I understand that the very nature of a journalist is to speak truth to power. If the power I speak to comes out of my own office, then so be it.”
Throughout my entire journalism career, I’ve kept a plaque on my desk with the quote, “A person who risks nothing does nothing, has nothing, and is nothing.” But you don’t have to start with a big public gesture to find your own personal power. Start with small inspirational steps.
I believe that a big step in being strong is visualizing ourselves as women being strong. We have to imagine ourselves in the position of winning, or speaking up, or telling the truth. I have always used visualization to help me gear up for hard challenges, even if it meant standing in front of a mirror and practicing what I was going to say and do, looking myself in the eye and saying, “You can do this”—and most important, seeing myself doing it!
It’s a sad fact that only about 60 percent of people in this country still believes in the American dream. My advice? We need to fight for it. When I put my kids to bed at night, I tell them that the American dream can be theirs with hard work and perseverance and should never be taken for granted. So too with our fight as women. When we stand together and advocate for ourselves, we are fighting not just for our own lives, but also for all of us as a whole, in a society that ultimately encourages us to be our best selves. We can still achieve the American dream. Let’s do it together.