The Most Shocking Thing About Trevor FitzGibbon’s Behavior Is How Common It Is
The Most Shocking Thing About Trevor FitzGibbon’s Behavior Is How Common It Is
Sexual harassment is a reality for far too many women, even in progressive workplaces.
In the days since one of the country’s most powerful PR firms on the left disintegrated amid allegations that its founder, Trevor FitzGibbon, had sexually harassed and assaulted employees and clients alike, many progressives have been scratching their heads and looking inward. How could someone so enmeshed in the movement—whose clients included the AFL-CIO and MoveOn, and even feminist groups NARAL Pro-choice and UltraViolet—himself be such a sexist abuser, as many women are now claiming?
But the news shouldn’t be surprising, even at a progressive organization. It’s only the latest sign that, while it’s technically illegal, sexual harassment still permeates the workplace—regardless of its ideology.
The Civil Rights Act, passed in 1964, laid the groundwork for outlawing sexual harassment, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the nation’s watchdog for people’s workplace rights, incorporated protection from sexual harassment into its regulations in 1980, making it officially illegal. Most Americans only became acquainted with the fact that harassment is against the law when Anita Hill testified against Clarence Thomas’s nomination to the Supreme Court in 1991. Still, it’s been the law of the land for decades.
Yet, even now, women are regularly victimized by harassers at work. One recent survey of several thousand women by Cosmopolitan magazine found that a third had been sexually harassed at work at some point in their careers. Other polls regularly uncover similar figures; one from 2011 found that a quarter of women had experienced workplace sexual harassment, while another from 2013 found that one in five women had been harassed by a superior and a quarter had been harassed by a coworker.
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http://www.thenation.com/article/the-most-shocking-thing-about-trevor-fitzgibbons-behavior-is-how-common-it-is/
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New details have emerged from a bias lawsuit filed by three former employees of Merrill Lynch against the company, which alleges that during training they were instructed to read a book called “Seducing the Boys Club: Uncensored Tactics From a Woman at the Top” and emulate its advice.
The tips in the book, published by New York Magazine’s The Cut, are truly shocking. “I play on masculine pride and natural instincts to protect the weaker sex,” says a section of the book advising women on how to get men to do their work. “Unless he is morbidly obese, there is no man on earth who won’t puff up at this sentence: Wow, you look great. Been working out?” suggests a portion on diffusing tense situations.
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These demeaning and rather tragic pieces of advice might well be a reality for many women on male-dominated Wall Street. It’s a known Boys’ Club, and Wall Streeters have a track record of using women as scapegoats, instead of treating them as equals. Women are vastly underrepresented in the finance industry — much more so than in other areas — and hold only 8.6 percent of executive officer jobs. Women also earn less than men in finance; the top six jobs with the biggest pay gaps are financial.
Yet she keeps their money and goes back for more.
