(Thoughts for March 8, International Women’s Day.)
#MeToo reveals that the cost-benefit analysis in most organizations has been flawed. CEOs and Boards routinely concluded that it was cheaper to pay off victims than to fire their cash cows predators. Yet research shows the hard costs of unchecked sexual harassment. For employees, it causes burnout, turnover, and stress-related illness, more sick days, which leads to higher health-care costs and more disability claims. Owners and shareholders lose when profits are spent on investigations, fighting lawsuits in court, cash payouts to victims, and through loss of productivity. In many places, it wasn’t until the hidden behavior of executives came to light and it threatened the brand that the Board took action. The Weinstein Company had been aware of Harvey’s behaviors for years, but when they finally fired him, it was too late, and now they have filed for bankruptcy.
Organizations will waste even more money if they think training alone will stop sexual harassment in the workplace. Seventy-one percent of American companies conduct anti-sexual harassment training, yet a 2017 Quinnipiac University poll found that 69% of US women and 20% of men have been sexually harassed at work. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which pursues lawsuits against companies for sexual harassment, commissioned a study of the sexual harassment training delivered in the US over the past 30 years. The researchers found that training had no effect.
Instead, companies should focus on changing their culture which enables predators. Global research and programs by the UN, the World Bank, and academia, have found that training combined with programs to create gender equality—equal pay for equal work, building pipelines to increase inclusion of under-represented populations, involving men as champions, and holding managers accountable—prevent harassment and lead to better job satisfaction, productivity, and business outcomes.
Gender equality simply means equal pay for the same work and women having access to the same opportunities as men. An example of gender inequality is the Fortune 500 list of CEOs, which just revealed that only 27 are women. Gender inequality often is worse in industries where the myth still prevails that women don’t have the same capabilities as men. For example, has been linked to the type of boys club, frat house, competitive, and hyper-masculine behavior seen in Wall Street and in Silicon Valley’s IT industry.
As one of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, gender equality is a core goal of International Women’s Day programs and activities. It also turns out to be good business. For example, McKinsey recently conducted a study of companies in the US, the UK, Europe, and Latin America and found those that are more gender equal, in both pay and in leadership positions, outperform their competitors by 15%. The UN movement, HeFoShe, has enlisted champions from governments, private industry, and academia to spearhead efforts that address gender equality—both in developed and developing countries. At the core of these initiatives has been men taking a hard and honest look at how their privilege has advantaged them and made them blind to unconscious bias that perpetuates the systemic behaviors that limit women’s access to the same opportunities as men.
Gender equality, however, cannot happen without the support of men. Unfortunately, the status quo has tarred it as a feminist issue and being “anti-men.” Nothing could be further from the truth. What is often overlooked, according to Dr. Michael Kimmel of Stony Brook University in a recent Ted Talk below, is that men are often disadvantaged by gender inequality, which derives from the cultural norms that equate their worth with being the sole breadwinner. Long hours, competing to establish their place in an extremely competitive bureaucratic pecking order, and shame when they fail, results in men on average committing suicide 3.6 times more than women, having higher chances of dying of a chronic disease, abusing alcohol or drugs, and committing domestic violence.
Organizations like HeForShe, Promundo, MenEngage, Catalyst, MARC all provide resources for business on how to implement gender equality, for men on how to become champions, and for society on how to raise the next generation of men free from the toxic masculinities which victimize them as well.