Fierce advice on fighting harassment

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This article was published 10/11/2017 (3172 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

NEW ORLEANS — When former Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson was asked to give a talk at TEDWomen 2017 on sexual harassment in the workplace, she immediately said yes.

She’d been doing interviews to promote her just-released book, Be Fierce: Stop Harassment and Take Your Power Back, but this was an opportunity to shape and direct an uninterrupted message to women everywhere. And she wasn’t just thinking about those in elite careers confronting the male titans of business and entertainment, Carlson said.

Since filing a bombshell sexual harassment lawsuit last year against former Fox News chairman Roger Ailes, Carlson said she has been contacted by tens of thousands of women — and a few men, too — from all walks of life, who still live with sexual harassment, even rape, every single day.

She launched into the story of a radio DJ who approached her boss to ask for a promotion and was told, to “get up on the desk and spread ’em.”

It is their stories she wants in the public eye, she said.

“All these women are saying me too, me too, me too,” she said. “My greatest hope is that (a sense of empowerment) actually starts to filter down into all the professions of women that I’ve heard from. Because it’s pervasive across all socio-economic lines. It’s from waitresses to Wall Street bankers to lawyers to teachers to members of our military to flight attendants.”

She used a portion of her 14-minute talk to give a voice to some of those women, their names populating a screen behind her.

She took a swipe at U.S. President Donald Trump, remarking at a picture of the two of them together decades ago, when she was Miss America. Who would have thought they’d be where they are today, Carlson mused. She, speaking out against sexual harassment in the workplace, and “he, president of the United States in spite of it.”

But Carlson didn’t dwell on what has been — she quickly shifted her focus to what should be.

“Let’s hire back all those women whose careers were lost because of some random jerk,” Carlson said. “We will stand up and speak up and have our voices heard. We will be the women we were meant to be.”

During the TED speech, she talked about the importance of changing laws at the federal level to stop the pervasiveness of secret arbitration clauses in employment contracts that keep women silent. She implored victims of sexual harassment to speak out and witnesses to stand alongside them.

In an interview after, Carlson delved into how she wants women to be prepared for what happens after they stand up to their accusers.

“It’s not fun to come forward. There’s nothing rewarding about being demeaned or taken down,” she said. “Women don’t do this for fame or money or because it’s fun.”

First, she said, talk to a lawyer before you do anything else.

“HR is not always the best place to go to report these incidents,” she said. “You have to keep in mind who writes the paycheques.”

Second, she said, “document, document, document what’s happening to you.” Keep a journal and take it home with you every night. Send yourself copies of emails to an outside email.

“A lot of the women that reached out to me, they had been documenting, and then when they got fired when they had the courage to come forward, they couldn’t go back to their office and so they could never get their stuff,” she said.

And lastly, tell someone.

“Even though it’s really tough, you’ve got to tell at least two trusted colleagues,” she said. “Because as long we’re still in this ‘he said, she said’ environment that is changing, but still exists, you have to have two people who will say, ‘Yeah, she told me about this’ or ‘Yeah, I saw it.’”

Carlson also has a message for the men who stand idly by and let the harassment happen, or even laugh along with it — they can make it stop.

“If we’re really going to change the dynamic in the workplace, we need men to stop being enablers and bystanders and come forward,” she said.

It’s a lesson Carlson is working hard to instil in her 12-year-old son.

While she preaches hard work, self-respect and dogged determination to both him and her 14-year-old daughter, she said, the pressure cooker of parenting these days really intensifies when it comes to raising the next generation of men.

“I think it’s actually more important how we raise our sons, because they’re watching and listening and hearing everything,” she said.

Carlson spoke about her children during her TED talk, saying they were “paramount in my decision-making about whether I would come forward.”

She talked about how her daughter came home from her first day of school, the same day it was announced that her lawsuit against Ailes had been settled for US$20 million, and said, “Mommy, I was so proud to say you were my mom.”

Carlson’s voice cracked and her eyes filled with tears as she continued talking about her daughter and how she stood up to two other students who had been picking on her in the aftermath.

“I had the courage to do it,” Carlson recalled her daughter saying, “because I saw you do it.”

— Washington Post