We’re having an extended series of “moments” about gender with Harvey Weinstein’s outing as a serial sexual assaulter, outrage at UNited States President Donald Trump’s celebration of groping women and the rise of #metro and #timesup.
Social media allows women around the world to immediately see how their sisters are battling to make progress. The women’s movement which, in decades gone by, flourished around kitchen tables and at school gates is now — courtesy the internet — international.
An affront to women in the US engenders support in the United Kingdom, the passionate misogyny speech of Julia Gillard, former prime minister of Australia, inspired solidarity and anger in the UK. The sisterhood is now global. And there’s no doubt that the mood has changed. Assaults on women that were commonplace but not acknowledged are now put in the public domain and challenged. But we have to learn the rights lessons from these moments.
The first is that we’ve made progress. In years past, Weinstein would have been regarded as frisky, “a bit of a lad”, the young women judged as “asking for it” or frigid. Now it is acknowledged as wrong and it is the men who have to account for their actions rather than the women they prey on.
Second, Weinstein is not “one bad apple”. That sort of behaviour is prevalent in the film industry and indeed in all occupations with a male hierarchy and in which women want to advance. The vast majority of men would not dream of abusing their power to force themselves on young women. But some will and hitherto they’ve had impunity.
Third, the lesson is that there’s safety in numbers. One woman on her own would just have been crushed by Weinstein’s powerful legal and PR team and driven out of the industry. But no man can do that when there are a multitude of women’s voices.
Fourth, we need to use the moment to challenge men acting in the same way. Women, and men, have been doing that in respect of other men in the film industry. In the UK, women stood up to challenge a cabinet minister, defence secretary Michael Fallon. Jayne Merrick, a young journalist, risked her reputation and her career to speak up about Fallon groping her. But others then came forward and he was sacked.
Fifth, we need to alter the complaints system so that a man who sexually assaults women is stopped after the first occasion not only after decades. That means the complainant must be able to report anonymously. No woman wants to be known only for the fact that she’s complained against a famous man.
There must be independent adjudication of complaints. He can’t be judged by people who know and work with him, but don’t know her. And there must be protection from backlash and discrimination against the victim. The complainant is doing a public service by challenging criminality. She must be protected — not vilified. In the UK, parliament is changing its rules for complaints against MPs, as is the Labour Party.
Six, we need to ensure that male-dominated hierarchies are a thing of the past. Sexual assault and exploitation cannot thrive in the same way where there is a mixed team of men and women in authority.
In more rumbling in the gender jungle, there has been an explosion of anger and embarrassment in the UK about unequal pay triggered by the BBC. We all love “Auntie”, as Britain’s national broadcaster is known, but it is not at all lovable that the BBC pays its on-screen men massively more than its women.
Carrie Gracie, the brilliant Mandarin-speaking BBC Chinese editor, discovered that she was paid 50 per cent less than the BBC’s US editor. (And he doesn’t have to speak Mandarin or risk arrest to do his job). She protested and resigned and BBC women and the wider women’s movement rallied to her support.
There is need for Britain’s Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) to collate and publish this information by sector and by region so all women, and men, can see how their organisation compares. And the EHRC will need to insist on tough action plans and strict targets. Unions will need to move pay equality up the bargaining agenda to do justice for their female members. We don’t just want to see the gender pay gap, we want to change it.
Success in the battle to get a pay gap reporting into law was swiftly followed by heated argument about how it would be measured. I held out for average hourly pay for women compared to average hourly pay for men. That way, we’ll be able to see the discrimination against the army of female part-time workers. Britain’s National Office of Statistics has reported the pay gap as around 9 per cent — a figure which I’ve never believed.
Early reports from organisations publishing ahead of the April deadline show it around 30 per cent, which I think will be nearer the mark. We can celebrate that we’ve changed the mood. But we need to change the reality and that means change in policy and processes. Male privilege is deeply entrenched. These “gender moments” put that in the spotlight. But they mustn’t be just movements. We must use them as the spur to change and that means relentless persistence and dogged determination. But with the support women can gain from each other around the world, we are up to the task.
— Guardian News & Media Ltd
Harriet Harman is the UK’s former shadow deputy prime minister. She will be addressing the Labor International conference, Progressive Labor Agenda: Tackling Inequality, in Sydney tomorrow.
