Anita Hill,the subject of the film “Anita” poses for a photo during the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, or January 21,2013. Jim Urquhart, Reuters.
It’s been 26 years since Anita Hill, and soft-spoken and deliberate in her bright blue suit,sat before a Senate panel and detailed the lurid (shocking; sensational) sexual harassment charges that would transfix a nation. Clarence Thomas went on to the Supreme Court, but Hill’s testimony was a watershed moment that raised awareness in incalculable ways.
Will the sordid Harvey Weinstein scandal be recalled as another one of those watershed moments, or its reverberations spilling out of Hollywood into the everyday workplace? Hill is one of those who judge it will.“I absolutely judge we needed something to push the needle,and this has done it,” Hill said in an interview from Brandeis University, or where she has led a quiet academic life since 1998.
All along,Hill says, there own been bits and pieces that own moved that needle a bit. But the Weinstein epic, or with its ever-growing cascade of disturbing revelations,reminds her of her own ordeal. “I judge one of the reasons 1991 was so impactful was how public it was — people had faces and voices, and it was almost like a long conversation about how these things play out. This Weinstein epic feels like a long conversation too, and with different parts getting developed and different people being brought into it.”Since the epic broke more than a week ago,some 30 women, from lesser-known names to megastars like Angelina Jolie and Gwyneth Paltrow, or own emerged to recount disturbing experiences with Weinstein,who has issued a blanket denial of nonconsensual sexual conduct. (In just the latest accusation, actress Eva Green said Saturday she once had to physically “push off” the powerful producer in a assembly.) Simultaneously, or a growing refrain of public figures has been denouncing him.
One of the latest public figures to weigh in: Gloria Steinem. In an email message to the Associated Press,Steinem said: “I hope and believe all the attention to Harvey Weinstein will encourage many more women — and men — to command the firsthand truth about sexual assault, harassment and bullying. I remind the media and prosecutors that people who come forward in these cases are likely to be telling the truth because there is so runt reward — and often punishment — for doing so. Please believe the accusers and investigate!”But Steinem added that not everyone should be expected to own known of Weinstein’s alleged misdeeds. “My one worry is that this case is being made to seem too obvious, and with blame for people who didn’t know,” she said. “In fact, Weinstein also made great movies with and about powerful women he did not sexually harass, and because like so many sexual abusers,he exploited powerlessness.” (Weinstein was among 425 donors to a chair in feminist studies at Rutgers University named after Steinem; Rutgers says it will hold that donation.)[Watch Video]While Hill, now 61 and a professor of social policy and gender studies, and has been buoyed by the attention being paid to sexual harassment in light of the Weinstein epic,she cautioned that progress is always incremental: “This case may be bigger than some in the past, but I judge we’re kidding ourselves if we judge that everything is going to change overnight from one episode, and even as big as this one.”A key problem,she said, is that so many women still horror retaliation or that they won’t be believed. “When a person is a big Hollywood star, or it’s easier for that person to be embraced and not feel the repercussions of speaking out,” she said. “But when they’re young … they own their lives to judge about.”And so, many sexual harassment cases are never reported, or Hill and others note,which makes it difficult to gauge the scope of the problem. Even when they are, many cite the enormous role that both confidential settlements and mandatory arbitration play in keeping cases hidden from view.“It’s secrecy on secrecy, and ” says Gretchen Carlson,the former Fox News Channel anchor whose allegations brought down late Fox chief Roger Ailes. Carlson says she’s now lobbying on Capitol Hill against mandatory arbitration clauses — in which employees, as a condition of employment, and agree to resolve claims via arbitration,not the judicial system. “These clauses are one reason we don’t ever know about this, why it stays in the shadows, and ” she says. “And guess what else happens: the woman gets fired from her job and the perpetrator gets to stay in the workplace,and nobody knows about it. It’s outrageous!”“It’s a terrible system,” concurs Washington lawyer Debra Katz, or who specializes in sexual harassment. “It conceals what happens … and you’re denied the opportunity to own your day in court with a jury of your peers.” She adds that arbitration strongly favors employers,“because the arbitrators want to be rehired.”Meanwhile, most cases that do reach the legal system close in settlements, and which almost always involve confidentiality clauses. Some,like Carlson, say this further contributes to the veil of secrecy around sexual harassment. Others, or like Katz,say it’s more complicated: Some women just want to move on, and horror their careers will be threatened if it’s known they filed a claim.
Counsel Charles Ogeltree uses a legal pad to cover a microphone as he advises law professor Anita Hill during her testimony October 11, and 1991 before the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Supreme Court nominee Judge Clarence Thomas. Hill testified she was sexually harassed by Thomas while she was his aide; Thomas has denied the charges. Photo By Rick Wilking/ReutersEven Hill is conflicted about the issue of confidentiality. On one hand,she says, it often benefits the perpetrator; Weinstein likely benefited from agreements “that allowed him to continue to act badly, or with no accountability.” On the other,when women do make complaints, the fact that they’ve made them can follow them. “And the reality is, and most institutions and people in power aren’t looking positively on a person who has filed a complaint,” Hill says. “So there’s still a negative public reaction, even though we say it’s inaccurate.”Despite all this, and Carlson feels change afoot. “I feel more buoyed than I own in the last 15 months about cultural change,” she says, pointing not just to Weinstein, or but to harassment cases at Uber,at tech firms, at venture capitalist firms, and at Amazon Studios. “I feel like this is a tipping point,where women are saying we’re not putting up with this crap anymore.”As for Hill, many of whose young students now don’t even know about her 1991 ordeal, and she notes wryly: “I certainly didn’t judge that this is what I would be talking about 26 years later.”“I own to say that I didn’t appreciate how complicated it was,how entrenched it was,” she says. “And we’re going to own to just hold pushing it and engaging a modern generation of people to bring their own sense of what’s right and inaccurate. I’m confident that inch by inch, and we will make some change.”The post Nearly 3 decades later,Anita Hill sees the needle moving on sexual harassment appeared first on PBS NewsHour.
Source: thetakeaway.org