source: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/22/opinion/sunday/for-women-its-not-just-the-oreilly-problem.html

Q: Have sexual harassment ever take place in your workplace? Or what is the case of such wrongdoing which is related to people relationship and usually occur in your workplace? Does it influence you?What's your methods to deal with it?

For Women, It’s Not Just the O’Reilly Problem

Bill O’Reilly’s ouster from Fox News Wednesday — nine months after similarly lurid charges of sexual harassment forced the resignation of Roger Ailes, the Fox chief executive — has opened another window into sexual abuse of women at Fox and in the workplace generally.

The serial nature of the alleged abuse, as well as Fox’s response to it, is also a reminder that exposing wrongdoing is no guarantee of change.

When Fox said on Wednesday that it was severing ties with Mr. O’Reilly after a “thorough and careful review of the allegations,” it neglected to note that the scrutiny was not prompted by the allegations themselves — which the company already knew about — but by the defections of dozens of advertisers from “The O’Reilly Factor” and a drop in the company’s stock price. Fox heaped praise on Mr. O’Reilly in announcing his departure. In all, the company has paid at least $85 million to resolve sexual abuse scandals involving Mr. Ailes and Mr. O’Reilly. Of that sum, as much as $65 million went to the two men, in the form of exit pay.

That’s not deterrence, let alone true accountability. It is, however, a good illustration of the entrenched reality of practices that have discounted, demeaned and derailed women’s work lives for decades. Those practices include not only sexual harassment, but also persistent disparities in pay and promotion, as well as structural impediments — in child care, scheduling and other workplace policies.

Those barriers to women are no secret. Their injustice is obvious. Yet they continue:

PAID LESS FOR BEING FEMALE The days are long gone when objective factors, like experience, for example, could even remotely justify women’s relatively low pay. On average, women today make 22 percent less per hour than men, even after controlling for experience, education and location. The gap persists even after controlling for the fact that black and Hispanic workers have historically had lower wages. Women even make less than men in jobs they dominate, like nurse practitioner and preschool or kindergarten teacher. Women not only make less than similarly educated men, but the gap tends to widen as the education level rises.

Reaching the top of the corporate ladder does not improve the situation. Among top earners in corporate America — at the 95th percentile of the wage distribution — women earn 74 cents for every dollar their male peers make.

The dynamics at the lower rungs of the pay scale are even more disturbing. There is rough parity among the very lowest-paid workers, because the minimum wage helps to ensure equal pay at the bottom — with one glaring exception. “Tipped” workers, two thirds of whom are women, are still paid the federal subminimum tipped” wage of $2.13 an hour in most states, a level unchanged since 1991. One result is poverty, with recent typical pay-plus-tips for these workers hovering around $9 an hour. Another result is sexual harassment, as economically vulnerable women tolerate abuse. The restaurant industry employs 7 percent of women but accounts for nearly 40 percent of harassment claims filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Those figures almost certainly understate the problem. As the scandals at Fox have demonstrated, women are often reluctant to speak out about sexual harassment, for fear of retaliation and in the misplaced hope that they can preserve their jobs by avoiding or defusing the situation. If highly paid women in glamorous media jobs feel that way, imagine what it’s like for women living paycheck to paycheck.

SKIPPED OVER FOR PROMOTION Across all levels at companies, women are 15 percent less likely than men to be promoted, a recent study by McKinsey and LeanIn.org found. At that rate, it would take more than a century to achieve gender parity in the executive ranks. The study also captured what appeared to be a tendency of companies to talk up their focus on gender diversity, without doing much. A vast majority of companies reported that gender diversity was a top priority for the company’s chief executive, but less than half of employees thought their company was doing what it took to actually improve diversity.

Women are nowhere near parity in the boardrooms of big American companies, either. They hold about one in five board seats, and serve mostly on “softer” committees dealing with corporate responsibility and human resources, according to recent research summarized by Bloomberg View.

Will more Fox-style debacles change that? The summary cited research showing that corporations with higher percentages of female board members suffered fewer governance-related controversies and outperformed those with lower percentages. Still other research shows that decision making improves when it involves both men and women.

SPEAK OUT AND THEN WHAT? The question is how to bridge the gulf between what women deserve and what they’re getting. Waiting for the male bosses in corporate America to get the message clearly isn’t working. One tack, adapted from the Fox scandals, would be to speak out through concerted efforts on social media about specific workplace injustices. It is not illegal for employees to talk to one another about how much they are paid, though companies have retaliated against employees who do so, and cultural taboos inhibit such conversations. But social media has amplified the power of speaking out, while reducing opportunities for companies to retaliate in secret.

Advocating to reform labor laws on the state level is another route, especially in the face of Congress’s prolonged inability to act decisively. Currently, for example, a handful of states do not have a separate subminimum tipped wage.

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COMMENTS
Unions are also needed, because pay gaps tend to be narrower in unionized workplaces. Workers would have to embrace unions, and corporations would have to allow union organizing without interference, which is a long shot, but likelier in the face of public pressure.

There will always be an important role for lawsuits and legislative changes, though lawsuits are often not an option for women who aren’t wealthy, and legislative progress, especially in this conservative and polarized time, is unlikely. Besides, to date, they have only gotten women so far — and there is so much further to go.