Comment by guessmyname | Hacker News Reader

Comment by guessmyname | Hacker News Reader

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Why are most of these articles about harassment in the office associated with American companies? Are women from other countries afraid to speak about this? Or are American women just overreacting?

In this specific case I understand that insinuating a rape scenario — which by the way is not against women but "everybody" — in a work environment is bad, but without knowing what other toxic comments or behavior happened in the same department where this woman was working, I cannot sympathize. Knowing how sensitive are people nowadays (specially in the United States) I wouldn't be surprised if the previous comments were things like "Man, did you see [female name]'s dress today? It's so ugly". They are probably worse than this, but again, without knowing the alleged previous incidents I cannot sympathize with this specific woman.

Also, why did she quit? Why not stay and fight for the rights of her other female co-workers? If what I understand from this story is correct, the other women do not report these incidents either because they are afraid of retaliation, or because they learned how to take (or ignore?) a (very stupid) joke.

EDIT: On a side note, imagine if the genders were switched. If the people making the bad "joke" were women, and the person reporting the incident was a man. He could have reported this to the CEO but do you think the story would have been published in this website or other? I don't think so. I am glad to have worked remotely for several years, to avoid these incidents with my co-workers.

In a world where tech companies are competing desperately to secure as much as possible of a limited pool of female talent, quitting (and encouraging other women to do the same) is a pretty direct and powerful way to incentivize the company to do better in the future.

Apple gets a lot of good PR for having a relatively high percentage of female employees; stories like this damage that, and in this case, it sounds like the black mark is at least in part deserved.

As for the difference between American and other countries, some possible conclusions that don't rely on the meme that women are catty or that everyone is too sensitive (even if they sometimes are):

- There are legitimate cultural differences between the U.S. and other countries. Look at parental leave policy in Europe vs. the United States.

- You may be exposed to more U.S. media than non-U.S media.

- Protections for women and minorities in general in the U.S. are weaker.

- Many of the biggest tech companies are U.S. companies. Silicon Valley is in Silicon Valley. Non-U.S. companies often get less media exposure than U.S. tech companies.

>Why are most of these articles about harassment in the office associated with American companies? Are women from other countries afraid to speak about this? Or are American women just overreacting?

It's a change in culture and expectations. It's also class specific. Men and women in the working class have different expectations and, in my experience, women in the working class can be just as brutal as men, when it comes to harassment.

To further the cultural aspect, it's like corporal punishment in the US as a way to steer child behavior. In some places of the world it's still okay and people see it as normal but most kids in the US would see corporal punishment as something that only happens to kids in bad households and many would call the cops on their parents or strangers --this of course was not the case 50-70 years ago.

> Why are most of these articles about harassment in the office associated with American companies? Are women from other countries afraid to speak about this? Or are American women just overreacting?

There's some other possibilities too, like it's worse in America than in other countries.

As someone who's spent a fair bit of time in Germany and Switzerland, lol no.

I can confirm that several nations in Asia also don't treat women employees better than they're treated in USA. b^)

> As someone who's spent a fair bit of time in Germany and Switzerland, lol no.

I would be interested to know more about your experiences there.

That's fine, but it's completely wrong for the poster to present this as a binary choice when it's anything but.

How bad is it there? Care to share?

Nothing to share on companies, but women couldn't even vote everywhere in Switzerland until 1991.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appenzell_Innerrhoden

I don't know. I haven't been everywhere, of course, but I have traveled extensively for my job, and I think American women have it pretty sweet in the workplace. If they were in Japan, for example, they'd probably be fetching tea all day and getting groped; if not at the office, on the train ride home.

I've seen women objectified and discriminated against a lot more abroad than I have in the U.S.

"It's worse in other countries" doesn't mean it can't be better here.

America is probably one of the most sexist and racist countries on the planet.

You simply don't hear about other countries experiencing these problems! Maybe some people will share personal anecdotes, but does it constantly make the news elsewhere?

If the country was truly to "most sexist and racist" do you think the events would be so newsworthy?

I think s/he is being sarcastic.

Don’t give them too much credit.

From an european POV I'd guess it has to do with fire-at-will and litigation-happy culture combined with scant labor protections for white-collar positions & low union participation. Maybe people are reluctant to raise issues until it's blatant enough that they can win a court case if they are shrugged off and fired by the employer?

In many north european countries you could take these up as a workplace bullying issue and possibly escalate to your municipal workplace safety ombudsman and/or union rep. But in most cases you wouldn't have to, your grievances would be taken seriously internally because there's the threat of escalation that won't necessarily end with the victim leaving the company.

I think that in europe we are more relaxed and nobody would not care this type of jokes. You would only tag the guy who did this joke as asshole and move on.

> Why are most of these articles about harassment in the office associated with American companies?

Most people on HN only speak English, and only read US news sources. Thus there's a natural bias away from EU or Asian sources, and towards US sources.

> Why are most of these articles about harassment in the office associated with American companies?

From my other comment : This is a western syndrome of "our lives aren't in imminent danger, we don't have to think about harvesting food and information is at reach" boredom.

Why can't we merely strive to live in a world without workplace harassment?

People who've survived sexual assault may well be experience the fear that humans have when their lives are in danger.

There are people who survived sexual assault and those who have PTSD from a joke.

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