Lessons from being sexually harassed at Google
medium.com
medium.com
No one will speak up because he's too important and most of the women need the jobs (single mothers or primary bread winners). He gets away with most of this stuff in full view of the company.
Wait a few months and write an anonymous review on glassdoor or publish something somewhere. Things don't get better until we name names.
Never the less, sexual harassment is an issue, it's an issue in tech, but it's an issue in the workplace in general. I think one difference is the willingness to report sexual or any harassment tends to be higher where the workforce is more economically secure as well as better educated. I other words a server at McDs might not be willing to be as jeopardize a job as someone with alternatives, access to attorneys and support network.
So, it will seem like the problem is more problematic in tech, finance, etc, whereas in actuality the problem may be much bigger in other areas of the economy.
The point is this tech isn't an incubator for harassment, it's present everywhere in perhaps greater degree, so addressing it as such (a big issue) rather than that thing that happens in tech, would better serve American society.
And techie women are better than average of raising awareness of problems in their industry, because they know how to Internet.
Though my friends have horror stories from law, finance, and consulting too.
Link: http://www.eeoc.gov/search/search?access=p&entqr=0&output=xm...
However if she's just sitting in his office and out of no where he lays one on her cheek? Yeah that's weird. Again, context.
No. It was unwanted contact. It is, at a minimum harassment, and at worst assault.
Arguing context about one bit of behavior in the context of a pattern of harassment is insulting to a victim of harassment.
Jumping to conclusions without understanding the context is an insult to those falsely accused of harassment.
http://www.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2015/03/07/former-google-e...
This is not incompatible with HR working for the company. They did their damnedest to protect the company from a lawsuit.
It would save HR a lot of work and many young employees a lot of confusion and stress.
What I mean is that this teaching should instill in employees the confidence that it's totally ok and safe and even advised practice to say "f_ck off" to your manager if s/he makes unwanted personal advances and to report them to HR if they don't.
If the only way to deal with harassment is to report it to HR people will hesitate because it's severe, it's process, it involves other people (and HR is not your friend).
It is all the things that you might want to save the person that might honestly misread you because he's a dumbass.
Companies should kind of own up to the fact that their employees are not asexual and that some people make some misguided attempts to flirt with co-workers and some accept the flirt and reciprocate.
Female colleague from the story who thought she was blowing the situation out of proportion probably had way more liberal opinion of office mating games.
Instead of outright banning this they should just discourage it (because it breeds conflict) and create obvious way for employees to clearly opt-out from this office activity (because those that don't want to play are horrified by human mating rituals, myself included).
I think in old days simple slap in the face had this role (totally unacceptable today, today's men can grow up without being slapped even once so they wouldn't think it's an assault or some SM sh_t). Not sure though what were men doing 50 years ago to fend off female advances apart from wearing a ring and acting completely disinterested.
That said, what I'm getting at, is that there are times when people step over the line into harassment in full view of others.
Not just in sexual harassment either. Verbally or physically abusive behavior falls into this category as well. Sometimes the victim may be afraid or unwilling to stick up for themselves but ultimately harassment hurts the whole workplace so third party reporting can be an extremely valuable measure to address the issue.
Isn't that victim blaming? Sorry about the manquestioning and the use of micro-aggressive gendered pronouns.
Yes, the first piece of legal advice people receive is make a timeline on pen and paper. When you report something to HR, they also write everything down on pen and paper. I don't know why. I'm not a lawyer.
Yea, that sounds inappropriate, though it'd be nice to get context.
> asked to sit on my manager’s lap
Wtf? Yea, that's messed up. Again, it'd be nice to get some context.
> told about my manager’s sex life and virility
Inappropriate work conversation sure, but not necessarily "sexual harassment".
> told that “all men go through an Asian fetish at some time,”
Again that might be inappropriate work conversation, but I wouldn't necessarily deem that sexual harassment. Definitely depends on the context.
Why wasn't the manager fired?
My one gripe with these kinds of articles is that context is generally ignored. We've seen enough false accusations (eg. Adria Richards) that I think it's important for real victims who're going to write articles on these topics accusing others of wrongdoing to be more detailed in their accounts if they want to be taken more seriously. (Remember the fiasco with the Google employee who claimed that she was sexually harassed because somebody she looked good in a bathing suit at a work retreat?)
But being too thin-skinned in the office is also bad. In many european countries it is expected for new people to be (politely) kissed in the cheek as salute when introduced to coworkers of the opposite sex in the team. This is the common salute and social rule and is not seen as harassment at all. This can be a little shocking for people from other cultures; but most fully grown people should be able to fine tune quickly their expectations; and safely navigate around the most common social conflicts.
That said, you should talk to the person in question if you are uncomfortable so they have a chance to "correct" their behavior when around you. That's the generally accepted best practice.