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Women in theatre: why do so few make it to the top?

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Women in theatre: why do so few make it to the top?

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An all-female Julius Caesar has just hit the stage, but it's a rarity in theatre. In a special report, Charlotte Higgins asks leading figures why women are still underrepresented at every level of the business – and what needs to change

"It's a big world in here" is the ringing phrase the Young Vic theatre in London has adopted as its motto. It's a nice play on Shakespeare, for, as he said, all the world's a stage (not for nothing did he call his own theatre the Globe). On stage, real people act out human desires and dilemmas in front of a live audience: at its best, theatre is the art form that best represents the world.

Except that it doesn't. Some months ago, the staging of two all-male Shakespeare productions at the Hampstead theatre in London uncorked an explosion of frustration from women actors, writers and directors. There was a sense of basic injustice – actor Janet Suzman talked of a "really frustrating" career where there "aren't bloody well enough parts for women"; deeper concerns were also expressed.

This failure to represent women, argued the actor, writer and director Stella Duffy, was deeply entwined with society's wider failure to put women's voices on an equal footing with men's. A sense of responsibility to the world was, she said, being ducked – particularly by our larger national stages. In an impassioned blogpost, she wrote: "When we do not see ourselves on stage we are reminded, yet again, that the people running our world (count the women in the front benches if you are at all unsure) do not notice when we are not there. That they think men (and yes, white, middle-class, middle-aged, able-bodied men at that) are all we need to see."

After I wrote an article quoting Suzman and others, Elizabeth Freestone, artistic director of Pentabus theatre, wrote to me. While an artist-in-residence at the National Theatre, she had done her own research into women in theatre, which she offered to show me. She had also done fascinating work on Shakespeare, unlocking some of the root causes of this imbalance.

The Guardian teamed up with Freestone, and we extended and updated her research. Her headline figure had been that there was a "2:1 problem" in English theatre, or two men for every woman; this was borne out by our new findings, too. Women are seriously underrepresented on stage, among playwrights and artistic directors, and in creative roles such as designers and composers. On the other hand, women are a substantial majority when it comes to the audience. According to Ipsos Mori figures produced for the Society of London Theatre in 2010, women make up 68% of theatregoers.

We looked at the top 10 subsidised theatres in England – those best placed to provide leadership – and at their record in the financial year 2011-12. (One important detail to bear in mind: the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company received at least six times more subsidy than the next-best-funded theatre, the Royal Court in London.)

The 2:1 problem begins at board level. Our sample had an average of 33% women on their boards; only one, the Royal Court, has a majority female board. Women accounted for 36% of the artistic directors; executive directors were much better represented at 67%. Of the actors employed by the 10 theatres, 38% were female, with the National coming out worst at 34%.

Of directors, only 24% employed were women; and when we examined creative teams (directors, designers, sound designers, composers), 23% were women. We found, too, that women in creative roles were less celebrated. In 36 years of Olivier awards, women have won only twice for director (Deborah Warner, in 1988 and 1992) and four times for playwright (Caryl Churchill, Timberlake Wertenbaker, Pam Gems and Katori Hall).

We were aware that our statistics did not dig into the subtleties of women's careers. Josie Rourke and Kate Pakenham, the artistic and executive directors of the Donmar Warehouse, tell me their office is almost entirely staffed by women in their 20s and early 30s. But will they rise through the ranks? "For me," says Rourke, "a huge part of the conversation is how you stick at it in your 30s, and what motivates you to move from middle to senior management." For those in freelance roles, the theatre is a hard place to sustain a career and children: no pension, no maternity leave, a nomadic lifestyle, unsociable hours. "It will take huge wisdom and honesty for theatre to investigate its culture," says Rourke.

The weight of history is not on the side of female playwrights: the canon is overwhelmingly male. Even so, we were surprised to learn that one of our top 10, Chichester festival theatre, employed no female directors and produced no plays by women over the period we looked at. Artistic director Jonathan Church suggested this was an anomalous sample; he also pointed to the financial pressures on regional theatres and the need, when programming contemporary or 20th century work for a big auditorium, to put on "names" that have had West End success, such as Coward, Ayckbourn, Stoppard, Hare, Rattigan: all men.

There is currently a blooming of extraordinary female voices in theatre, among them Lucy Kirkwood, Lucy Prebble and EV Crowe. Yet we found that women writers accounted for only 35% of the new plays produced – another expression of the "2:1 problem". There is, however, some cause for hope: 41% of the plays commissioned by our theatres, but yet to reach the stage, are by women. Nicholas Hytner, artistic director of the National, sees this as a hugely positive sign: "I won't put a date on it, but in not too many years the gender balance of directors and writers will be 50-50. I can say that with confidence because I look at directors and writers in their 20s and 30s and it is 50-50."

Still, there are nuances behind such figures. Of the seven plays by women produced at the Royal Court in this period, all but one were staged in its smaller auditorium: meaning a smaller fee, fewer royalties, a lower profile. If these women are being nurtured towards bigger careers, so much the better; but will they be allowed to make the leap? The playwrights I spoke to talked of careers that had sparkled in their 20s and stalled in their 30s. The really big commissions had never come, and they found their male peers outstripping them. Some had turned to screenwriting: still tough, but, according to playwright Zinnie Harris, "In TV, I haven't encountered the feeling that you're not going to get to the top because you are a woman."

Only two original plays by women have ever been staged in the largest auditorium at the National: Rebecca Lenkiewicz's Her Naked Skin in 2008, and Moira Buffini's Welcome to Thebes in 2010. According to writer Tanika Gupta, who has a new play at the Swan in Stratford next year, there is an underlying doubt about the material women are capable of taking on. "The argument is that women can write very good domestic drama, but are not intellectually rigorous enough to do the big plays. We need to be given the chance to write those state-of-the-nation plays."

Harris adds: "It is somehow harder for people to embrace a play written by a woman, whatever its quality. There is something slightly unseemly about filling stages with our voices, whereas men have a sense of filling Chekhov's or Ibsen's shoes. The woman who raises her voice becomes shrill and hectoring; the man becomes authoritative." She believes the media is at fault, too. "When plays by women don't work, they are over-condemned. With men, they are seen as a step on the way to developing an interesting voice." The statistics bore out what we had suspected: women playwrights write more roles for women than their male counterparts. Women wrote 49% of their parts for women; men wrote 37%.

A clear message began to emerge about the importance of women running instititutions. Female artistic directors had staged many more plays by women than their male counterparts. Roxana Silbert at the Birmingham Rep came out top: 32% of the plays she has directed are by women. She was followed by all the remaining women. Then came David Lan at the Young Vic (15%), followed by all the remaining men. Neither Hytner nor Gregory Doran, artistic director of the RSC, has ever directed a play by a woman.

It is clear that history comes into play here: both men have had careers that focus on the classics, with Doran a specialist in the 16th- and 17th-century repertoire. When I put this to Hytner, he said he believed his own record was "irrelevant: there are all sorts of things I have never directed because I am not very good at directing that kind of thing". Freestone disagrees: "Profile and visibility matter. Those in charge of national organisations have a responsibility to show leadership." Vicky Featherstone, who in April becomes artistic director of the Royal Court (England's most important theatre for new writing), says: "It is a no-brainer that there should be equal representation of men and women in the theatre. It is absolute common sense and I expect nothing less."

Our research was not intended to browbeat individuals. Rather, it was meant to focus debate on fact rather than anecdote, and to encourage theatres to take gender into account. As Freestone puts it, "This is about asking: are you thinking about gender balance? Do you ask the question? If you have 10 writers under commission do you think about it if they are all men? If you never think to ask, that's when you are in trouble." She argues that much more needs to be done. "The theatre world remains strangely passive in the face of overwhelming evidence of its failure to address the gender imbalance both on and off stage. Programming, commissioning and casting decisions are routinely made without any consideration of gender."

Why is this 2:1 ratio so stubborn? Like so much else in English theatre, it goes back to Shakespeare. He was, of course, writing for all-male companies; and, though he wrote transcendent parts for women, there aren't very many. Of his 981 characters, 826 are male and 155 female: 16%. Women have less to say, too: of roles with more than 500 lines, only 13% are female. The most wordy of Shakespeare's heroines, Rosalind, has 730 lines. Hamlet, his most loquacious hero, has 1,539.

This means less work for women actors, and fewer opportunities for them to develop their skills via the many workaday parts available to men. The Shakespeare problem has persisted because, until relatively recently, much of British theatre relied on the repertory system: a company of actors performing a handful of different plays in a season. Shakespeare would frequently sit at the heart of such a company; many new plays would therefore tend to be written for a similar gender balance. There is something deeply culturally engrained about this: it runs so deep that we have become used to not seeing women equally represented, arguably aided by a culture of complacency. The Shakespeare inheritance has meant, says Freestone, "we've been caught thinking that 30% women is good enough. I'm not saying there's been institutional sexism, but there has been a sort of blindness to female actors because of the burden of the classical canon."

The answer to this is, surely, gender-blind casting, especially in the classics, where colour-blind casting has ceased to be a matter for comment. Phyllida Lloyd, whose current all-female Julius Caesar at the Donmar has provided a focus for recent debate, is clear: "If I were running the RSC, I would make it 50% male and 50% female actors – and then I would work out how to do the plays," she says. "It wouldn't be a stranglehold, it would be liberating."

When I speak to Doran, he tells me he has invited Lloyd to run a company of actors at the RSC on precisely those lines. "Watch this space," he says. Hytner believes he cannot impose strictures, that directors' casting decisions have to be based on their own instincts: "I am very interested in gender-blind casting and often think it is excellent. But I can't tell writers how they should write and directors how they should cast. What I admire is that the Donmar Warehouse responded to Phyllida Lloyd's desire to do Julius Caesar that way." When the National staged Timon of Athens this year (Shakespeare's most male-heavy play), five male parts were given to women – though the share of female lines increased only from 0.67% to 14%.

For many, this is not enough. "I really believe that a more imaginative approach to casting the classics will unlock all kinds of creative interpretations, and naturally feed in to all other areas – male playwrights writing female parts, more confidence in female creative teams," says Freestone. Duffy argues that fringe theatre is better balanced, and that the national companies should be leading by example – "and they are not, and I find it heartbreaking". She adds: "We have a responsibility to make the world a fairer place, and sometimes you have to do a little social engineering to make that happen." In the end, she says, "I don't know why people don't just suck that up – and get on with it." (1)

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Charlotte Higgins. (2012). Women in theatre: why do so few make it to the top?. Available: https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2012/dec/10/women-in-theatre-glass-ceiling. Last accessed 25th September 2020.

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The ‘me too.’ movement was founded in 2006 to help survivors of sexual violence, particularly Black women and girls, and other young women of color from low wealth communities, find pathways to healing. The founders vision from the beginning was to address both the dearth in resources for survivors of sexual violence and to build a community of advocates, driven by survivors, who will be at the forefront of creating solutions to interrupt sexual violence in their communities.

In less than six months, because of the viral #metoo hashtag, a vital conversation about sexual violence has been thrust into the national dialogue. What started as local grassroots work has expanded to reach a global community of survivors from all walks of life and helped to de-stigmatize the act of surviving by highlighting the breadth and impact of a sexual violence worldwide.

Their work continues to focus on helping those who need it to find entry points for individual healing and galvanizing a broad base of survivors to disrupt the systems that allow for the global proliferation of sexual violence.

Their goal is also to reframe and expand the global conversation around sexual violence to speak to the needs of a broader spectrum of survivors. Young people, queer, trans, and disabled folks, Black women and girls, and all communities of color. They want perpetrators to be held accountable and we want strategies implemented to sustain long term, systemic change. (2)

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Girls for Gender Equity (GGE) is the fiscal sponsor of the ‘me too.’ movement, and receives tax-deductible charitable contributions for the benefit and use of implementing the ‘me too.’ movement’s programming. GGE is a New York nonprofit benefit corporation located in Brooklyn, NY, qualified as exempt from federal income tax under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code (IRC) and classified as a public charity under IRC Sections 509(a)(l) and l 70(b)(l)(A)(vi). (2)

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How They Do the Work: Supporting Survivor Healing and Community-Based Action to Interrupt Sexual Violence:

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How They Do the Work: Supporting Survivor Healing and Community-Based Action to Interrupt Sexual Violence:

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The ‘me too’ movement supports survivors of sexual violence and their allies by connecting survivors to resources, offering community organising resources, pursuing a ‘me too’ policy platform, and gathering sexual violence researchers and research. ‘Me Too’ movement work is a blend of grassroots organising to interrupt sexual violence and digital community building to connect survivors to resources.

As the ‘me too’ movement affirms empowerment through empathy and community-based action, the work is survivor-led and specific to the needs of different communities.

Tarana Burke began ‘me too’ with young Black women and girls from low wealth communities. She developed culturally-informed curriculum to discuss sexual violence within the Black community and in society at large. Similarly, the ‘me too’ movement seeks to support folks working within their communities to attend to the specific needs of their community/communities, i.e. supporting disabled trans survivors of color working to lead and craft events/toolkits/etc. with other disabled trans survivors. Together, they are uplifting and supporting each other to strengthen a global movement to interrupt sexual violence. (2)

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 #MeToo and the Future of Sexual Harassment Law:

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 #MeToo and the Future of Sexual Harassment Law:

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There has been significant progress in protecting employees from sexual harassment over the past twenty years. Courts have recognized that sexual harassment is perpetrated by and against people of all sexes and genders, takes sexual and nonsexual forms, and is often motivated by bias and hostility, not sexual desire. Yet sexual harassment persists and remains largely unreported. The #MeToo and #TimesUp movements have motivated people to speak out about sexual harassment, but many of those now choosing to speak remain vulnerable to retaliation. This Essay provides the perspective of an attorney whose practice focuses on plaintiff-side employment law in California. It explores the ways that state laws can offer greater protections to employees, using California as a model. It then reflects on some of the shortcomings of current state and federal law. Finally, it discusses some of the proposed legislation that, inspired by the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements, seeks to prevent harassment and to protect employees who come forward. (3)

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Now that the conversation of the #MeToo Movement has come to light, it is expanding globally and the majority of the public, specifically in the Performing Arts Industry, are educated on the topic. The abuse that is occurring in every occupation, from low-pay jobs such as fast food chains, to Hollywood film sets is being touched upon and justice is being served. The project intends to reach out to a 'broader spectrum of survivors'.

These survivors want the people responsible to be held accountable for their actions, past and present, and in addition to this, rules in workplaces and more laws to be put in place so that the future generation does not have to experience the same treatment as some have faced; systematic change is needed for long term effect, helping 'young people, queer, trans, and disabled folks' to 'Black women and girls, and all communities of colour'. (4)

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Now that the conversation of the #MeToo Movement has come to light, it is expanding globally and the majority of the public, specifically in the Performing Arts Industry, are educated on the topic. The abuse that is occurring in every occupation, from low-pay jobs such as fast food chains, to Hollywood film sets is being touched upon and justice is being served. The project intends to reach out to a 'broader spectrum of survivors'.

These survivors want the people responsible to be held accountable for their actions, past and present, and in addition to this, rules in workplaces and more laws to be put in place so that the future generation does not have to experience the same treatment as some have faced; systematic change is needed for long term effect, helping 'young people, queer, trans, and disabled folks' to 'Black women and girls, and all communities of colour'. (4)

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The #MeToo Movement is driven by the survivors, with them creating solutions in an attempt to interrupt and stop sexual abuse and harassment in their communities, whether this being at home, at work or wherever they may be; the ultimate aim is to 'focus on helping those who need it to find entry points for individual healing and galvanising a broad base of survivors to disrupt the systems that allow for the global proliferation of sexual violence'.

This movement doesn't just highlight the sexual abuse but it also strives to directly help the survivors with support, allowing them to heal.  With the movement being so well-known now, globally, these survivors now have the ability  to communicate their experience and discuss this with others who have endured similar, if not the same experience. The movement supports survivors of sexual violence and their allies by connecting survivors to resources, offering community organising resources, pursuing a 'Me Too' policy platform to gather researchers and research the crimes that have taken place.

The #MeToo Movement doesn't just generalise the survivors help now as the movement is such a global force - they still adapt specifically to the needs of 'different communities'.

'Similarly, the #MeToo Movement  seeks to support folks working within their communities to attend the specific needs of their community/communities, i.e. supporting disabled trans survivors of colour working to lead and craft events/toolkits/etc. with other disabled trans survivors '.  (4)

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Tarana Burke was born on the 12th September 1973 and is known for founding the #MeToo Movement. She is also a civil-rights activist, who is African-American. She had quite a troubled childhood, growing up in a low-income, working-class family in a housing project. She is also a three time survivor of sexual assault, as a child and also as a teenager. Her mother was the one who actually supported her throughout these traumatic events and encouraged her to start talking and use these horrific occurrences to help others who had experienced similar.

Her career has always revolved around helping others, starting working alongside the 21st century youth leadership movement and other helpful organisations.

In 2003, she co-founded her own organisation, with an aim to support and offer help to young minority women, and from this she then continued on to be a consultant on the film 'Selma' and also work at an arts sanctuary in Philadelphia; currently, she is 'Senior Director at Girls for Gender Equity' in Brooklyn and engages in public speaking events across America, that promotes support for survivors of sexual assault. (5)

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The original phase - 'Me Too' was created by Burke whilst she was working at her organisation, 'Just Be Inc.'. She would often hear stories from girls who had been sexually assaulted, with one girl even mentioning it being carried out by her mothers boyfriend, and from hearing these accounts, would be left speechless, searching for anything that she could say in order to help these girls deal with the situation at hand and emphasise with them; she started saying "You are not alone. This happened to me too".

From this point on, it became Burke's phrase and started this now huge movement. Burke believes that the statement is 'double-edged' as it means that she is not afraid, nor ashamed of what has happened. This also shows the survivors that she feels, understands and knows what they are experiencing. (5)

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Referring to the girl that Burke had spoken to, who had been assaulted by her mothers boyfriend - her name was Heaven. Burke recalls the events of what happened to Heaven as 'Doing all sorts of monstrous things to her developing body'. Burke claims that she was horrified by the events told and after five minutes of being spoken to, had to turn the girl away as she couldn't bear to listen to any more. She also claims that the look on Heavens face still haunts her to this day.

As stated on her website, Burke says "I think about her all of the time. The shock of being rejected, the pain of opening a wound only to have it abruptly forced closed again - it was all on her face. As much as I love children, as much as I cared about that child, I could not find the courage that she had found". Burke then continues to say "I watched her walk away from me as she tried to recapture her secrets and tuck them back into her hiding place. I watched her put her mask back on and go back into the world like she was all alone and I couldn't even bring myself to whisper... me too". (5)

This real account was the original catalyst for the #MeToo Movement.  Heavens bravery to share her story means that now, others are using that same courage to share theirs.

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Despite Tarana Burke having created the campaign, on October 15th 2017, from this tweet, Alyssa Milano created a chain reaction in regards to the movement.

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Alyssa Milano is an American actress, producer, singer and activist; her first acting opportunity was at an open audition for 'Annie', where she was cast as an orphan, but it wasn't until she gained the role of 'Samantha Micelli' on 'Who's The Boss' which became her breakthrough role in the industry.

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Alyssa claims to have been sexually assaulted over 30 years ago but did not report the incident as she believed that the accusations would not be taken seriously. In the wake of accusations against Harvey Weinstein, she tweeted (above) and thus, others could project the fact that they are a survivor without having to give details.

She says that it took her 30 years to even tell her parents and never sought justice as she never wanted to relive it and instead wanted to forget about it altogether.

However, despite this, she knew that speaking up about her own experience would encourage others to do so too, to which she was correct. (6)

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In an emotional recounting, Alyssa Milano said that she was assaulted while at a concert in her teens.

Milano, now 45, has become a prominent voice in the #MeToo movement and has publicly taken a stance against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. In a video she shared to Twitter Wednesday, the actress shared her story.

"My name is Alyssa," she began. "When I was 19 years old, I was at a concert of a very famous pop star, who told the crowd to get closer to her. This resulted in a stampede."

Describing the scene, Milano remembered: "People were smashed against each other, I couldn't breathe. I thought I was gonna die.

"From behind me, I felt a hand up my skirt, and I was punched repeatedly in the vagina," she said of her alleged assault. "I couldn't turn around. I looked to the stage, and I looked to the security guards, and I said, 'Please, help me.' They couldn't help me."

Milano said she was able to flee by climbing up on stage. The star said she couldn't tell who had assaulted her in the crowd.

"I couldn't report because I didn't know who it was to report," she said. "And I didn't tell anybody, because I didn't know who it was to tell on."

Milano tweeted that the personal video was filmed in Sen. Susan Collins' office. "We asked to speak with Senator Collins. She hid," Milano said.

She traveled to D.C. to support Dr. Christine Blasey Ford as she testified at Kavanaugh's hearing last Thursday. Milano wrapped up by referencing the woman who accuses the judge of sexual assault.

"I kept the secret just like Dr. Ford kept her secret for decades," she said.

Milano helped spread #MeToo, a movement originated by Tarana Burke, and called out disgraced filmmaker Harvey Weinstein in an essay for Rolling Stone published in January.

"These brave women who were blacklisted by Harvey Weinstein and were the first to break the silence are now in their late 40s and 50s," she wrote of those who accused the estranged husband of her friend and "Project Runway All Stars" colleague, Georgina Chapman. "How much work is there for women in their late 40s and 50s? Harvey Weinstein ripped a generation of actresses from society. Think about that."

More: Amy Schumer, Emily Ratajkowski arrested while protesting Kavanaugh

More: Alyssa Milano: It was 'difficult' to attend Kavanaugh hearing amid phone fiasco, outfit shaming

More: 'Saturday Night Live' taps Matt Damon to play an angry Brett Kavanaugh

Read or Share this story: https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/people/2018/10/05/alyssa-milano-concert-sexual-assault-19-punched-metoo/1532125002/

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Alyssa Milano talks violent sexual assault at concert when she was 19: 'I couldn't breathe'

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CLOSE In an emotional recounting, Alyssa Milano said that she was assaulted while at a concert in her teens. Milano, now 45, has become a prominent voice in the #MeToo movement and has publicly taken a stance against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. In a video she shared to Twitter Wednesday, the actress shared her story.

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Harvey Weinstein was born on March 19th 1952 and was an American film producer.

He and his brother Bob founded a company called 'Miramax' then in 2005, founded 'The Weinstein Company'. This ran until 2017, which was the year that his Hollywood empire came crashing down.

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On the 5th of this month, The 'New York Times' reported a story that accused Harvey Weinstein of sexual misconduct, sexual harassment and paying out eight settlements over the space of 30 years to actress's he has worked with and women who used to be part of his companies. This was the beginning of the end for Harvey Weinstein's career as only five days later on the 10th, Ronan Farrow a reporter for 'The New Yorker' reported that Weinstein had raped 3 women and sexually assaulted another 13; Farrow stated that he'd wanted to publish these allegations much earlier but was told by his parents company, NBC, that he couldn't because they were under pressure not to - they of course denied this. In this report it states that people did in fact know about Weinstein's activities and as many as 16 current or former employees of Weinstein had been told or even witnessed this acts of Weinstein that all have reported to be non-consensual. It was then reported that 4 actress said they had rejected Weinstein's approaches and fired from whatever project they were on as a result of this.

They all had suspicions that Weinstein was behind this as a way to prove his authority.

Dawn Dunning said in a Sky News documentary that Harvey had said that "This is how this industry works' after he offered her 3 film contracts in turn for sexual activity with himself and his assistant.

Furthermore in this report, an audio recording was published, in which Weinstein admits he inappropriately touched Ambra Gutierrez in 2015, I that same the model Gutierrez went to the NYPD years earlier to obtain this audio recording but allegedly a  'national enquirer' which is an American publisher agreed to shut down the claims from not only Gutierrez but also Rose McGowan. In the end, there hadn't been enough evidence to convict Weinstein of any crime at this time.

In addition to this, earlier, when Farrow had been investigating this case, apparently Weinstein had hired a private investigation company to stop any claim about himself from emerging in the press, as it would tarnish his name and reputation.

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There had always been talk in the Hollywood circuit about Harvey Weinstein' infamous 'casting couch', with the earliest ever comment on this or Harvey as a 'sleezy' bloke was in 1998 when Gwyneth Paltrow said on a talk show that 'Weinstein will coerce you to do a thing or two'; surprisingly enough, another actress this time, Courtney Love, stated in 2005 'If Harvey Weinstein invites you to a private party in the Four Seasons, don't go.'

Moreover, again in 2010, an article emerged, which had mentioned the 'casting couch'.

In 2012, an American TV series made a joke about Harvey Weinstein and his advances on women and in 2013 Seth McFarlan made another joke, only this time at an academy award ceremony.

Later in 2012, a book was published by one of Weinstein's former employees at Miramax and details of many incidents of misconduct by Weinstein were spoke of.

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Currently, there is over 100 women in total that have accused Harvey Weinstein of many crimes; these include rape, sexual assault, assault and sexual harassment.

From the information gathered from many reports, it is a reaccuring theme that women will say that Weinstein would always invite them to talk about their career and then demand sex or sexual acts in return for help with their career.

The list of women who have accused Weinstein of sexual abuse, assault or harassment is very extensive and has some very famous names on it, some of these are; Kate Beckinsale, Cate Blanchett, Cara Delevingne, Salma Hayek, Angelina Jolie, Myleene Klass, Rose McGowan, Lupita Nyong'o, Gwyneth Paltrow, Uma Thurman and Asia Argento. With many more names on that list.

In an interview with a former Mirimax employee, she stated that 'Weinstein would have women in there (his office), three times a week at least'. (7)
This happened for 30 years so the number could be in the thousands.

There is also 14 women who have said Weinstein raped them. 11 being named and 3 unnamed.

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(8)

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As of October 2017, the police forces reacted, London's, LA's and New York's police departments started processing the situation and started reviewing Weinstein's actions. Each police department started their own investigation into Weinstein.

In October 2017, the NYPD was preparing a warrant to try to arrest Weinstein just for the rape of Paz De La Huerta, but up until 2018, in May, the investigation was still pending. By the end of that month, Weinstein was actually charged with crimes, some of those being rape, sex abuse and harassment, but on the same day, a 1 million dollar bail was paid and the agreement he would give up his passport and wear an ankle monitor and be confined to just New York and Connecticut allowed him free.

The LAPD are investigating an unnamed actress that accused Weinstein of certain crimes and the London police are looking in cases that go back to the 90's; this is total of 15 cases regarding Harvey Weinstein.
There has been many civil lawsuits against Weinstein, some of these being against his company.

One of his old personal assistants tried to sue him, as did Ashley Judge as Weinstein made false comments about her. In addition to this, there are also reports of Weinstein trying to settle lawsuits against him for 44 million dollars.

Weinstein's lawyer Benjamin Brafman said that his client will plead not guilty.

From then to now, more charges were put on Weinstein but were then removed and the trial date was pushed back to January 6th 2020.

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Weinstein received widespread abuse and backlash for the horrific crimes he committed, this backlash coming from various people, famous or not.

Weinstein also got fired from his own company and also removed from many organisations such as the BAFTA's and as well as this, the President of France and Labour party in the UK took away titles from him.

Furthermore, he underwent a divorce from his wife; she divorced him only 5 days after the allegations came out.

Women began coming forward from all walks of life, and started sharing their own stories about being sexual abused or even raped.

Charles Upham who was the father of Misty Upham came forward to the authorities, stating that a member of Weinsteins team had raped his daughter and the others watched and even worse, didn't just watch, but cheered. This just shows the toxic environment that Weinstein created at his company.

There were documentaries made by Sky News, 'The New Yorker' and 'The New York Times' and they won prizes for their work uncovering the scandal; The people behind the Me Too Movement were named the 'Silence Breakers', the movement spreading across Europe and in fact, the world.

In places such as France, political parties were accused of sexual harassment. The outing of Weinstein put other heads on the chopping block and more allegations came out against people such as Kevin Spacy, Louis C K and Brett Ratner.

This was called the Weinstein effect.

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The Weinstein effect also put the Me Too movement on a global stage, which gave women confidence all around the world to speak up and just simply say 'Me Too'.

Something that people may not know is that it was a women called Gretchen Carlson that made a complaint against Roger Ailes who was her stations chairmen at Fox news. This encouraged journalists to look into not only Weinstein but Bill O' Reilly as well, and this lead to Bill being fired in April 2017 and then in May 2017, 10 months after the allegation, Ailes died.

As you know, the 5th and 10th of October were the days in which the allegations came out against Weinstein.

This created the effect that allowed men and women all around the world to share their stories online about sexual misconduct and this affected many industries, not only the performance industry, with actors and directors such as Kevin Spacy, Ben Affleck, James Tobak and even people from the new medium of YouTube such as 'Screen Junkies' creator, Andy Signore.

More industries were affected as well as politicians and senators such as John Conyers and Al Franken, and even TV figures were accused. Two examples are Matt Lauer and Charlie Rose.

Saying this, it wasn't just an effect in the USA, as UK politicians were accused also. These allegations span across decades, there were even accusations against charities and festivals in Canada and in the UK and even defence securities and Welsh ministers too. Journalists said that it was a reckoning and the time had come for justice. People unsurprisingly accused Donald Trump of sexual misconduct as well as Bill Clinton and R. Kelly too.

Very high profile figures that were in support of the Me Too Movement have also had allegations made against them for sexual harassment and assault.

Firstly there was Leslie Moonves who was the CEO of CBS and founded 'Commission on Sexual Harassment and Advancing Equality in the Workplace', this was formed in 2017, after the Weinstein allegations emerged. At the end of July 2018, 6 women did come out against him and accused him of sexually harassing them, the most famous one of these was the actress IIIeana Douglas.

Another very interesting accusation was against Asia Argento, who was the leading, 'Weinstein accuser and prominent #MeToo movement leader'. (9)

In 2013, only 4 years before this, it is understood that she assaulted a then 17 year old, Jimmy Bennet in a hotel in California. He was not only under the age of consent she was also a survivor of assault herself.

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Everyone knows he's a very famous actor, who has been in many things and he is probably most famous for his role as Frank Underwood on House of Cards.

From the Weinstein Effect, I have mentioned his name was brought up multiple times in multiple different countries with allegations spanning from the 80's all the way to 2016. It is understood by the public and media that Spacey claims he didn't do it as much as Weinstein has but he there's still maybe a few cases that he can be charged for, including young males.

The first accusation is from 1986 and is from Anthony Rapp an actor who starred on Broadway but at this time he was only starting out as a 14 year old while Spacey was 26, Rapp said Spacy did appear drunk and tried to sexually advance himself on Rapp, a whole 21 years later is when Rapp shared this story to the world but, he did try to tell people in a interview in 2001 but Spacey's name had to be removed as they didn't want to publicly out a very famous well respected actor. I feel the fact that Spacey was drunk and this was the first accusation meant he just tried to play it off saying in a tweet he doesn't remember it and he owned Rapp 'the sincerest apology for what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behaviour',(Melas, 2017) he still denied doing this anyways. Spacey couldn't keep hiding and lying for long though as more and more allegations and accusation started coming out of the woodwork, as another 15 more young men, these ranging from news broadcaster's son, film directors to former Norway royal family members. Whilst he was artistic director at the Old Vic Theatre more than 20 people came forward with account he had 'behaved in an inappropriate way with young men', a further 8 people came forward who had worked on House of Cards, one of the films Spacey worked on, the production had to be shut down for 2 days because Spacy behaved inappropriately to a young male actor and made sexual advances on them. Then by September 2018 almost a year on from the original allegations two separate departments in LA the 'District Attorney's office' and the 'Superior Court', started to investigate a claim that Spacey sexually assaulted a young man in 1992, and a young masseur in 2016, whilst across the pond Scotland Yard said they had now 6 open investigations just into Spacey alone.

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In wake of all these allegations, the filming for House of Cards final season was put on stand by and the Media Rights Capital, who produce the show. These producers felt like they had to open up an 'anonymous complaint hotline, crisis counsellors, and sexual harassment legal advisors for the crew', and because of all the allegations MRC then came out and said that back 2012, a member of crew had complained about a remark and gesture by Kevin Spacy, but MRC said that Spacy wanted to learn and take a course and they'd had no complaints since. The series of House of Cards was meant to finish in 2018, but it was cut short by 5 episodes. Spacey was removed from the cast and executive producer, Netflix cut all ties with Spacey, and they then cancelled two upcoming projects of his, cut him from a film already made, and he then also, was not honoured at an award show and his publicist and talent agency left him. (10)

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'Times Up' is an organisation that was founded in order to terminate sexual abuse and the culture revolving it in Hollywood. 'This organization, has raised millions for legal funds and amassed volunteer lawyers, as well as donating to women’s organizations and sharing support lines and advice for shooting sex scenes. Time’s Up has also been about visibility as well as action, with actors promoting the campaign at awards ceremonies, for example, by bringing activists as their red carpet dates to the Golden Globes.' (11)  The organisation has helped aid and encouraged those affected by the issue to join together to combat said issue and also find mechanisms in which to deal with their experience. 'The Producers’ Guild of America drew up and issued anti-sexual harassment guidelines' (11) Although the matter is illegal, this has not prevented such cases from occurring. Us, as a community, have to be educated on the topic and understand the systems in place should we ever deal with such or know someone who is dealing/has experienced these circumstances. 'The guidelines include training for all cast and crew and designating people that workers can approach to report any incidents.' (11) 'Times Up' also has a UK department in place.

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With the progression of the #MeToo movement, Vicky Featherstone and Lucy Davies, who are 'the artistic director and executive producers of Londons Royal Court' set up an event for those working in the Performing Arts Industry, named the 'No Grey Area'. This event is for those affected by the movement to share their experiences and opinions; additionally, Featherstone and Davies created a code for those working in theatre to follow. This code reminds people of how they should behave within the working environment. The theatre sector have pro-actively taken measures in response to this movement. Cassie Chadderton, head of UK Theatre, said that 'The sector is a more supportive environment than it was 12 months ago. There is much more likelihood that you will hear the words: ‘Is that okay, or not okay?’. As the start of a conversation, that’s a good thing. Of course, a lot has to sit behind it.' 'UK Theatre’s handbook, Encouraging Safer and More Supportive Practices in Theatre, provides a benchmark for the industry in dealing with harassment issues; Featherstone calls it “fantastic”.' This book contains 10 very important principles 'designed to promote a safer working environment in theatres. “Which then, we hope, goes on to create a much more open conversational culture. Which means it’s okay to talk about it if you think you’ve got a problem.' (12)

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Harvey Weinstein has been found guilty of sexual assaults, including rape, capping a stunning downfall for the former Hollywood mogul and a victory for the #MeToo movement.

Weinstein, 67, was convicted in New York City of third-degree rape and first-degree criminal sexual act.

He was cleared of the most serious count of predatory sexual assault but faces up to 25 years in prison.

He still faces charges in Los Angeles of assaulting two women in 2013.

At least 80 women had accused him of sexual misconduct stretching back decades, including actresses Gwyneth Paltrow, Uma Thurman and Salma Hayek.

The allegations were at the centre of the #MeToo movement that inspired women to go public with misconduct allegations against powerful men.

The movie executive once enjoyed phenomenal success with Oscar winners such Pulp Fiction, Good Will Hunting, The King's Speech and Shakespeare in Love.

Reports say he was taken to New York's Bellevue Hospital suffering from chest pains after the verdict was announced.

He was due to be moved to prison on Riker's Island to await sentencing on March 11.
The jury of seven men and five women reached their verdict on Monday morning, the fifth day of deliberations.

Weinstein - who denied all charges - was convicted of sexually assaulting former production assistant Mimi Haleyi in 2006 and raping Jessica Mann, a former aspiring actress, in 2013. The judge ordered him sent to jail immediately.
But the jury acquitted him on two counts of predatory sexual assault, which carried a potential life sentence, and first-degree rape of Mann.

In the minutes after the verdict, Weinstein showed no emotion as he talked to his lead lawyer Donna Rotunno. He will be sentenced on 11 March.
The third-degree rape charge in New York is defined as engaging in sexual intercourse with a person who is incapable of consent, or under age 17, or who has not given consent for a reason other than the inability to consent.

Prosecutors portrayed Weinstein as a serial predator who used his position of power in Hollywood to manipulate and attack women.

The defence team said sex between the movie executive and the accusers was consensual, and that the accusers used the relations to advance their careers. The allegations amounted to "regret renamed as rape", the defence said. Two of the accusers kept in contact with Weinstein and had sex with him after the alleged attacks, they pointed out.

How did we get here?

Allegations against Weinstein began to emerge in October 2017, when the New York Times first reported incidents dating back decades

Weinstein issued an apology acknowledging he had "caused a lot of pain", but disputed the allegations

As dozens more accusations emerged, Weinstein was sacked by the board of his company and all but banished from Hollywood

A criminal investigation was launched in New York in late 2017, but Weinstein was not charged until May 2018, when he turned himself in to police.
Ms Haleyi, who had worked on one of Weinstein's television productions, said she was assaulted by the producer after he invited her to his Lower Manhattan home.

She testified that he backed her into a bedroom, held her down on the bed and forced himself on her.

Ms Mann said that she found herself in an "extremely degrading" relationship with him that did not involve intercourse until he raped her in a New York City hotel room in 2013.

She said he was a "Jekyll and Hyde" figure who could be charming in public but showed his dark side when they were alone.

Another one of Weinstein's accusers, Sopranos actress Annabella Sciorra, told jurors he raped her in her apartment one night in the mid-1990s.

Weinstein accuser: 'No' was a trigger for him.

Her allegation was too old to be charged as a separate crime, but prosecutors used it in an attempt to demonstrate that the accused was a repeat sexual offender.

Following the verdict, Ms Sciorra said: "I spoke for myself and with the strength of the 80-plus victims of Harvey Weinstein in my heart."Three other also women testified they were lured to apparent work meetings with Weinstein, then sexually assaulted.

"The fight is not over," Ms Rotunno told reporters outside the courthouse. "Harvey is unbelievably strong. He took it like a man and he knows we will continue to fight for him and he knows that this is not over."

She said her client was disappointed, but "mentally tough".

Rose McGowan told the BBC's Newshour programme: "The little girl I was when I was hurt, she's ecstatic...This is a great day. The trash has been taken out."

The actress, who was an early Weinstein accuser, added: "The fact that we are white women and attractive and of some means and it still took this many of us to even get him to have one day in court - just tells you…how almost impossible it is to even be heard, period, let alone [get] any kind of conviction."

What happens next?

Weinstein's lawyer said the defence will be appealing against the conviction "immediately"

He still faces charges of rape and sexual assault in Los Angeles, and there are other cases under review, according to the county district attorney

Civil complaints against Weinstein continue to be fought

In December 2019, lawyers said they reached a tentative $25m (£19m) deal with some accusers (13)

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Editors at metoo. (2018). About. Available: https://metoomvmt.org/about/#history. Last accessed 18th November 2019.

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Schultz. V. (2018). #MeToo and the Future of Sexual Harassment Law . The Yale Law Journal. 128. Introduction

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Burke, T. (2006 ). History and Vision . Available: https://metoomvmt.org/about/#history. Last accessed 13th November 2019

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The Editors at BBC News. (2017). Harvey Weinstein: Met police investigate new sex assault claims. Available: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-41629689. Last accessed 15th November 2019

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Sisak, M. (2019). Judge upholds charges that could put Weinstein away for life. Available: https://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory/judge-upholds-charges-put-weinstein-life-67366205. Last accessed 30th November 2019.

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Severson, K. (2018). Asia Argento, a #MeToo Leader, Made a Deal With Her Own Accuser. Available: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/19/us/asia-argento-assault-jimmy-bennett.html. Last accessed 15th November 2019

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Melas, C. (2017). 'House of Cards' employees allege sexual harassment, assault by Kevin Spacey. Available: https://money.cnn.com/2017/11/02/media/house-of-cards-kevin-spacey-harassment/index.html. Last accessed 22nd November 2019.

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The Editors at Times Up. (2018). Safe, fair, and dignified work for women of all kinds. Available: https://timesupnow.org/about/. Last accessed 15th November 2019.

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Massie-Bloomfield, A. (2018). A year on from #MeToo, how much theatre has really changed?. Available: https://www.thestage.co.uk/features/2018/year-metoo-much-theatre-really-changed-harassment-theatre-industry/?login_to=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thestage.co.uk%2Faccounts%2Fusers%2Fsign_up.popup. Last accessed 15th November 2019.

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BBC. (2020). Harvey Weinstein found guilty of rape in watershed case. Available: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-51621041. Last accessed 26th February 2020.

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Whilst there are many current and past cases of misconduct in the US, and stories regarding the #MeToo movement, in the UK, there has been little discussion or people who have come forward to share their own experiences. I believe the reason for this being that British law is more stern than that of the United States. 'Before publishing, the media needs a water-tight case. To accuse someone of sexual misconduct, they would normally need proof (such as a recording) or a witness prepared to testify in court. In cases of sexual misconduct, both things are hard to find.' British media are consistently uneasy when contemplating publishing a story as they may be sued or their name/reputation tarnished dependent on the story and/or who is named.
'In the US, it's far harder to sue for libel. The reason is 226 years old, but as relevant as ever. The first amendment to the US constitution - adopted in 1791 - protects freedom of speech and freedom of the press.' 'So - compared to the UK - the burden of proof is flipped. Americans are less likely to sue, so US media are more likely to break the story.' This becomes additionally difficult when being a celebrity since 'When a public official (such as a government employee) or public figure (such as a celebrity) sues for libel, they must prove "actual malice". "Actual malice basically means the journalist lied," says Professor Karle. "Either the journalist published a story they knew was false - or they acted with reckless disregard over whether it was true or false. "That basically means - you lied."' In the US if you do win a case you do win a larger amount of money than you would do in the UK, to conclude 'If you've been wrongly accused, you may yearn for the British system - where publishing is riskier. If you're a victim, you may prefer the US system - where the constitution protects freedom of speech. Either way, the effect is clear.  The US has a flood of cases. In the UK, it remains drip-drip.' (14)

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Amos, O. (2017). Why so many sexual harassment cases in US, not UK?. Available: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-42070575. Last accessed 15th November 2019.

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The UKs biggest actors union 'Founded a working group last November and joined other entertainment unions in calling for anti-harassment clauses in contracts. One British actor I spoke to while researching this piece told me that she was recently harassed by a casting director during an audition. While her agents dismissed her complaint, Equity took her report seriously and fed it back to the casting director, who issued an apology at least. Other women in the industry tell me that they now feel more people listen to them in the meetings when they talk about inclusion or harassment, concerns that were previously dismissed.' (18)

As well as this, 'Meanwhile, Equity’s Agenda for Change report, created following contributions from more than 340 union members, offers practical guidance to encourage a “cultural shift in the sector”. Out of this, the union created a dedicated harassment helpline, and the provision of resources such as posters and an affirmation statement to be read at the beginning of rehearsals.' 'The Stage has carried out its own research into how the industry has responded to #MeToo over the past year. More than 80 commercial and not-for-profit theatre organisations, of all sizes and from across the UK, were asked about the action they had taken over the past 12 months. Of these, 84% said they had updated policies and procedures related to harassment and bullying.' (15)

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Snow, G. (2018). Harassment survey: 80% of theatre update policies in light of #MeToo. Available: https://www.thestage.co.uk/news/2018/harassment-survey-80-theatres-update-policies-light-metoo/?login_to=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thestage.co.uk%2Faccounts%2Fusers%2Fsign_up.popup. Last accessed 15th November 2019.

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Changing perspectives on sexual harassment law:

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Changing perspectives on sexual harassment law:

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"In the fourteen years I have practiced as an employee-rights attorney in California, I have seen both a broadening in the types of sexual harassment cases that courts recognize and changes in the way that employers handle such cases.

Twenty years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court held in Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Services, Inc. that same-sex sexual harassment was actionable under Title VII. Before Oncale, many courts viewed sexual harassment in very narrow terms: it was sexualized conduct that men directed at women. Indeed, Schultz’s groundbreaking article, Reconceptualizing Sexual Harassment, argued that by focusing on sexualized behaviors, many courts were ignoring conduct that was nonsexualized but nevertheless sex based.  In doing so, courts failed to recognize how men used harassment to undermine women’s competence and to drive them out of their jobs.

In Oncale, the Court confirmed that “harassing conduct need not be motivated by sexual desire to support an inference of discrimination on the basis of sex.” Instead, the Court said, Title VII’s prohibition on sexual harassment “must extend to sexual harassment of any kind that meets the statutory requirements,” including, for example, harassment “motivated by general hostility to the presence of women in the workplace.” (3)

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Sexual harassment in the workplace and the #MeToo Movement:

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Sexual harassment in the workplace and the #MeToo Movement:

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"Today, courts recognize that a wide variety of conduct can create a hostile work environment. Sexual harassment is perpetrated by and against people of all sexes and genders. It takes all kinds of forms—sexual and nonsexual.It is often motivated by bias and hostility, not sexual desire. And sexual harassment can be perpetrated by a variety of individuals, from supervisors, to coworkers, to subordinates, and even third parties such as customers.

In my practice, I have seen firsthand the broadening and development of sexual harassment law. A recent client’s situation—modified slightly to remove identifying information—is illustrative of conduct that has come to be recognized as unlawful sexual harassment over the past twenty years. This case highlights the influence of the unfolding #MeToo and #TimesUp movements on employer responses to sexual harassment complaints.

Laura worked as a designer for an advertising agency, reporting directly to its creative director, Paul. Her team was comprised mostly of women. Paul, a gay man, regularly expressed misogynistic views about women. He used sexist slurs, mocked women’s appearances if he did not consider them beautiful or thin enough, and he denigrated their work. Laura felt sick to her stomach every time she had to interact with Paul. But as the primary earner for her family, she was too afraid of retaliation to speak up. She simply could not afford to lose her job. All of the other women working there appeared to quietly tolerate the abuse, and upper management was aware of Paul’s conduct but did nothing to stop it.

Over several months, Laura found that the stress and discomfort from being around Paul were affecting other aspects of her life. She did not have much of an appetite and lost about ten pounds. She suffered from insomnia for the first time in her life. She found herself snapping at her husband and children. And she dreaded going to work each morning. She went to her doctor, who diagnosed her with anxiety and put her on a medical leave for a few weeks. It was then that she decided to consult with counsel to see if what Paul was doing was illegal and if there was a way for her to get out of this predicament.

After she retained me, I sent a letter to the company, describing Paul’s conduct and their legal exposure. The company, in turn, provided the letter to their outside counsel. Outside counsel immediately recognized the problem and agreed that a negotiated exit from the company was in everyone’s best interest. Laura, with severance in hand (and a confidentiality agreement that contained a mutual nondisparagement provision), left to find her next job. I do not know whether Paul ever suffered any consequences for his actions.

The following year, Laura found another job at a similar company. Days into her new role, she was shocked to discover that her new supervisor, Rick, was not much of an improvement over Paul. He, too, was overtly hostile toward his female subordinates. He belittled and demeaned them and made sexist comments about women in general. Once again, Laura was filled with dread.

But, in the time between when Laura left her prior job and started the new one, the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements had taken hold. This time, inspired by the movements, Laura decided that she would not suffer in silence. Over the course of a couple of weeks, she made sure to note down all the sexist comments and hostile behaviors that Rick directed at the women in the office. Laura then went to human resources at her new job and made a formal complaint, sharing these examples and listing out the names of the witnesses who were present each time.

The human resources department acted swiftly. It suspended Rick, conducted a thorough investigation, and despite his critical role at the company, ultimately terminated him. Laura felt empowered and vindicated, and the other women, who had tolerated Rick’s behavior for years, expressed their gratitude.

Twenty years ago, many courts would not have recognized Paul or Rick’s behaviors as creating a hostile work environment that would be actionable as sexual harassment. Neither man was acting out of sexual desire, and most of their comments were not of a sexual nature. Today, however, there is no dispute that such conduct, if proven, would be actionable.

Despite the law’s protections, however, sexual harassment persists. Fifty-eight percent of women surveyed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission have experienced sex-based harassment. Workplaces at greater risk for sexual harassment include those with “high-value” employees, significant power disparities, younger employees, or homogenous workforces. They also include workplaces where employees do not conform to gendered norms, or focus on customer service or client satisfaction, and workplaces that encourage drinking, or are isolated and decentralized.

My own experiences bear this out. I have represented clients in all of these situations, including clients who were sexually harassed by company owners and managers (who had free rein to do as they saw fit without anyone to hold them accountable), clients who were among only a few women in male-dominated environments (across the salary spectrum—from surgeons to warehouse workers), clients who worked in companies where “bro culture” prevailed and drinking was encouraged, and clients whose supervisors were allowed to get away with nonsexual abuse because it was not seen as “sexual harassment.”

Compounding this dismal reality, most of this sexual harassment goes unreported. For example, one study found that gender-harassing conduct was almost never reported; unwanted physical touching formally reported only 8% of the time; and sexually coercive behavior reported by only 30% of women who experienced it. When harassment is reported, the consequences can be dire: an estimated 75% of employees who speak out against workplace mistreatment faced some form of retaliation. Reporting “at best does not make things worse and at worst leads to retaliation, minimization of complaints, and additional injury to the reporter.” I have seen retaliation that ranges from the overt—termination—to the more subtle and difficult-to-prove. It has taken the form of increased scrutiny, withdrawal of support, lower ratings on performance reviews, changes in assignments, changes in work schedules, and subtle aggressions that can undermine a person’s security and success. Given the likelihood of retaliation, it is no surprise that most people who are sexually harassed believe that the safest course of action is inaction.

Most sexual harassment cases that come my way have a retaliation component. Potential clients often contact me after trying to resolve the matter in their workplaces internally, only to have the situation deteriorate. The remainder do not have faith in their employer’s’ internal reporting processes, are too afraid to go through it on their own, or feel that the situation is irreparable and want out.

Once again, however, change is afoot. Even one year ago, Laura’s complaint at her new company may not have received the same response. This is especially true because of Rick’s high-level ’role at the company. Rarely have I seen companies terminate someone as high-ranking and valuable as Rick for such conduct. However, the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements have galvanized the public, leading people to speak out who would not have done so before, while motivating many employers to respond lest they face the consequences of inaction. These movements have created space and an appetite for the expansion of employee rights and protections." (3)

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"In protecting workers against discrimination and harassment, federal civil rights laws such as Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 serve as a floor of protection, not a ceiling. California, with its Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA), serves as an excellent model of the wider coverage and broader protections that state laws can provide to employees.

California first passed the predecessor to the FEHA in 1959. It prohibited discrimination in employment based on race, religion, color, national origin, and ancestry. Over the years, the FEHA has been expanded to protect employees from other forms of discrimination and harassment, including mistreatment based on age, physical disability, mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, and military and veteran status. The FEHA expressly prohibits harassment based on protected categories, including sexual harassment, and has done so for decades.

Federal civil rights law operates differently. Unlike the FEHA, Title VII does not expressly address sexual harassment or any other type of workplace harassment. Rather, courts have interpreted Title VII’s prohibition on discriminating against any individual with respect to the “terms, conditions, or privileges of employment,” as including harassment that is sufficiently severe or pervasive to alter the conditions of employment.

The Supreme Court has laid out the elements necessary for a plaintiff to prevail on a claim for hostile work environment sexual harassment under Title VII:

1) He or she was a member of a protected group

2) He or she was subjected to unwelcome behavior

3) This behavior was “because of . . . sex”

4) The harassing conduct was “sufficiently severe or pervasive ‘to alter the conditions of [the victim’s] employment and create an abusive working environment"

5) The employer should bear responsibility for the harassing conduct.

California courts have adopted the same standards under the FEHA." (16)

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Schultz. V. (2018). #MeToo and the Future of Sexual Harassment Law . The Yale Law Journal. 128. III

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(17)

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The Editors at the United States Department of Justice Archives . (2012). AN UPDATED DEFINITION OF RAPE. Available: https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/blog/updated-definition-rape. Last accessed 15th November 2019.

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Netflix has apparently banned people from looking at each for longer than 5 seconds, as a part of their new anti-harassment rules. Accord to an article in the Sun, it also says that 'The new policy also bans the company’s film crews from asking their colleagues for their phone numbers'. The meeting where the polices changed, the senior officials went there and apparently looking at someone for longer than 5 seconds is creepy. 'Other new rules include: “Don’t give lingering hugs or touch anyone for a lengthy period of time,” “Don’t ask out a colleague more than once if they have said no,” “Steer clear of a colleague once they have said they are not interested in you,” and “Don’t flirt.” The rules also encourage employees to “Shout ‘Stop, don’t do that again!’ if a colleague has been inappropriate.' Netflix haven't actually confirmed or denied these new rules, but they did comment that they are proud of their anti-harassment training that they offer. (18)

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Timpf, K. (2018). Report: Netflix Bans Employees from Looking at Each Other for More Than Five Seconds. Available: https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/06/netflix-five-second-staring-rule/. Last accessed 15th November 2019.

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Unions join forces to boost mental health awareness in performing arts:

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Unions join forces to boost mental health awareness in performing arts:

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Equity is redoubling its efforts to address mental health in the performing arts, by teaming up with other unions and encouraging employers to bring the issue to the fore.

The efforts are being backed by MPs including Luciana Berger, who chaired a meeting of the Performers’ Alliance All-Party Parliamentary Group on July 10, attended by performers, other entertainment unions, the Society of London Theatre and UK Theatre.

In a blog for HuffPost to coincide with the session, Berger said: “We need new protections and new rights to be established. We value our arts and the contribution they make. We must value our artists too, and ensure no one’s mental health is affected by outdated and exploitative practices.”

Equity, the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain and the Musicians’ Union will now work with the parliamentary group to further raise the profile of mental health as an issue that must be addressed within performing arts workplaces.

The union has already begun hosting mental health and well-being drop-in sessions at the Actors Centre in London, as part of a drive to offer more support for performers.

The parliamentary meeting was also attended by employers, such as the West End’s Dominion Theatre, which has started running a programme of in-house well-being sessions for its workforce.

Among those speaking were actor Tanya Moodie, who said: “In the entertainment industry we are experts at veneer. By that, I mean there seems to be a premium placed on appearing successful when we are not working – for example, the advice I was given early in my career was to act and dress like I didn’t need the job no matter how broke I was and how often I’d been rejected – and being grateful when we are working. This includes never being ‘off’ due to sickness, exhaustion, childcare issues or injury.”

“Clearly we’re all here today because there is no easy answer. The best we can do is weave more stitching into the safety nets within our network in the hope of preventing more of our beloved colleagues from falling through the gaps,” she added.

Moodie also suggested there should be easy signposts for people needing immediate help, such as a link on Equity’s homepage to the mental health charity Mind.

Last month, a free helpline to provide mental health and well-being support was set up for theatre professionals. It can be accessed 24 hours a day by phone or email.

In 2016, a spate of suicides in the sector prompted the launch of ArtsMinds, a website aimed at supporting people in the industry suffering from mental health issues. (19)

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Georgia Snow. (2018). Unions join forces to boost mental health awareness in performing arts. Available: https://www.thestage.co.uk/news/2018/unions-join-forces-boost-mental-health-awareness-performing-arts/. Last accessed 14th January 2020.

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The Western tradition of theatre has its origins all the way back in ancient Greece and Rome. The Greeks started their theatre practice with tragic plays, which started around 532 BC. The problem was that Greek culture put women in a position of being inferior to men, so womens' role in society was very restricted in many ways. Women were not allowed to be on the stage because it was considered "dangerous." Men played male characters as well as female characters! "The Greeks believed that allowing women to perform publicly would be too dangerous and that having men portray them neutralized the danger." (Source) So what about the Romans? Well, the Romans had a similar view of women, which made it impossible for them to make it onto the stage. But over time, Roman plays did start to have a few female actors.

Theatre was an important tradition in Medieval times too. Medieval theatre was certainly an exciting thing, but how much were women involved? The answer... not a whole lot, but sometimes. There was still a perception in society that theatre was something that was better suited for men and not women. One interesting exception was the German writer Hrothsvitha, who "is considered by some to be the first person since antiquity to compose drama in the Latin West"  (Source) She wrote several plays, and her plays tended to present women as people with strong, noble personalities. This contradicted the view of women that most people in her society had, which was that they were weak in character.

In the 17th century in Europe, something great happened: Opera! The great thing about this type of musical theatre was that female singers were included in it. This did not please the strict Christian church, though. Their belief was that it was impure and improper for women to be on the stage. This is why castrati would sometimes sing parts that required a higher voice. These high-pitched men were an alternate choice to women, but that didn't completely stop women from being opera singers. Then, still in the 17th century, the English Restoration period occurred. One big step forward for women in theatre was Aphra Behn, who dared to go against cultural norms by becoming the first professional female playwright. Until then, it was unheard of for women to make a living writing plays! As for female actors, they sometimes played male characters, even though the opposite had happened in the past: "One might expect the admission of women on stage to be related to a demand for greater realism, but the actual result was not only that men and women got to play roles appropriate to their gender, but that the impersonation of the opposite sex could now go both ways." (Source)

As the years passed, women in theatre were gaining ground slowly but surely, despite the trends and traditions that told women no. This happened in early American theatre as well. There were female playrights, females acting on stage, plays that gave female characters a prominent role, and also, many females in the theatre audience. "Women helped change the dynamic of theater in the second half of the 19th century and were directly responsible for the rise in its popularity." (Source) While men still had a larger presence in the theatre world, females did some pretty interesting things. One notable example was Victorian-era Burlesque theatre, during the 19th century in both England and America. These flashy, sexy, hilarious shows were parodies of classic stories. Women were often featured in masculine roles. Playing crazy characters and reversing gender norms definitely did not create a respectable repuation for these  women... but this was an important step for women because it allowed women to rebelliously break free of many restrictive social expectations.

More and more types of theatre emerged as time went on. And as theatre expanded in a variety of different directions, women's importance in the theatre was also expanded. There's no question that women are a major part of theatre today, participating in all kinds of ways. But there was not an easy path that led to this point. It's unfortunate that theatre has historically been unfair to women. Still, there were a lot of women who loved theatre so much that they felt the need to defy cultural expectations and join in anyway. Let's be thankful for them. If it weren't for them, today's theatre would look very different! (20)

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Unknown. (2015). WOMEN IN THEATRE: A HISTORICAL LOOK. Available: https://nctheatre.com/blog/women-theatre-historical-look. Last accessed 25th September 2020.

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Women are being excluded from the stage:

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Women are being excluded from the stage:

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'Theatre is devoted to male narratives, and only a fifth of artistic directors are female. We need to impose a 50/50 gender split.
t’s a century after some British women were allowed to vote, and a statue of the suffragist Millicent Fawcett is being unveiled in Parliament Square, so why is women’s presence on the English stage still unequal to men’s?

In a recent survey, the Sphinx theatre found that just a fifth of English theatres were led by women, who between them control just 13% of the total Arts Council England (ACE) theatre budget. This week, the feminist campaigning organisation the Fawcett Society called for quotas to get more women into key positions, after its Sex and Power Index revealed startling gender disparities in the public arena. The situation in theatre, where I have worked all my life, is a startling gauge of the marginalisation of women.

The Conference of Women Theatre Directors and Administrators began auditing the number of females on stage in the 1980s. That we are nowhere near equality, almost 40 years later, was only too evident at the Olivier awards this month, when the prizes for best director and best new play went to men. When women do not have equal representation in theatre, it is impossible for them to have an equal chance of winning prizes. The Equal Representation for Actresses campaign group is among those pushing for change, but the male ruling elite refuses to share power.

Postwar British theatre declared itself to be the vanguard of a more equal society. From 1956, a new wave known as the “angry young men” celebrated working-class playwrights, directors and actors. Male rage was hailed as a revitalising force. Women’s rage was not. However, this working-class male movement never gave women equal opportunity. Sixty-two years later, female talent remains un-nurtured.

Britain needs gender equality quotas now, Fawcett Society says.

Even today, female playwrights and directors are atypical. Shakespearian gender-swapping has been mooted as a partial solution. One example is Michelle Fairley playing Cassia at London’s Bridge theatre. However, such theatrical novelty only serves to distract from the main issue – the absence of contemporary dramas reflecting the complexity of women’s lives. Cross-gender casting fails to question the over-representation of dead and living male playwrights. It does not address the fact that half our contemporary creative world is missing.

Why aren’t more women active demonstrators against this injustice? One reason is a justifiable fear of blacklisting. Some of the privileged theatrical knights who have led our flagships, the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company, have opposed gender parity. Consequently, women, who must seek male directorial approval to be employed, have dared not speak their name.

There are structural reasons for marginalisation. Drama schools educate female graduates to expect lower employment levels than their male peers. The actors’ union, Equity, the majority of whose members are female, rejects calls for equal representation. Most important of all is the position of ACE. This unelected quango crushes female ambition by boxing women into a category called diversity. This term reduces women – the majority of the population – to a minority. This promulgates the lie that females are diverse and males are mainstream. Orwellian double-talk maintains male dominance.

The exclusion of women from equal employment at all levels flouts both civil and human rights. The theatre is a serious, international political platform. It is a parliament of the arts, a form of soft power and a cultural territory as important as any physical land mass. With this abnegation of female flair, audiences are robbed of the full human story. These audiences are 65% female. There has never been a female artistic director of the National Theatre or Royal Shakespeare Company. Sir Nicholas Hytner, artistic director of the National Theatre for 12 years, until March 2015, never directed a play by a woman during that time. Women may occasionally appear as actors, directors and playwrights, but the English stage is devoted to worshipping male narratives. Where are the histories of our mothers, sisters and grandmothers?

In December 2017, the recently appointed chair of ACE, Sir Nicholas Serota, announced a 50-50 male-female split on its national council. What we need now is 50/50 employment for female actors, directors, playwrights and creative artists.

We may hate the concept of a quota system but decades of disenfranchisement mean that female artists and audiences have been cheated. When women’s human rights are acknowledged on the English stage, and when theatres are equally shared among expert professionals of both genders, only then can we say that our theatre is truly national and democratic.' (21)

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Julia Pascal. (2018). Women are being excluded from the stage. It’s time for quotas. Available: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/24/women-theatre-quotas-stage-gender. Last accessed 2nd October 2020.

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Sexism and gender divide ingrained in UK theatre:

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Sexism and gender divide ingrained in UK theatre:

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'British theatre has an institutional problem with sexism and gender inequality, according to the authors of a study who say Arts Council England (ACE) is ignoring the issue and failing to help redress the balance.

The research – conducted by the playwright Jennifer Tuckett and the Sphinx Theatre Company – paints a bleak picture of British theatre, with a bigger gender gap in certain areas compared with eight years ago, when the Guardian conducted an in-depth study of the issue.

The research in 2012 – in collaboration with Elizabeth Freestone, then artistic director of Pentabus theatre – revealed that women were vastly underrepresented, with a persistent 2:1 male-to-female ratio in British theatre roles. Tuckett’s latest research has found that in some cases the situation has worsened – for instance, only 31% of artistic directors are women, compared with 36% in the 2012 study.

The authors of the report, which looked at gender representation at all UK theatres that are classified by ACE as a national portfolio organisation (NPO) – say it shows theatre is lagging behind other art forms, after ACE recently released figures revealing 46% of artistic directors across NPO institutions were female.

The study, inspired by the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements, was conducted by Tuckett and a team of researchers who looked at the output of British theatres across their 2018-19 programmes. It also found that of the funding awarded to NPO theatres, 21% was controlled by companies with a female artistic director, and 0.64% of NPO funding from 2015-18 went to women’s theatre companies (defined as those whose aim is to work with women), such as Clean Break.

As two of the best-funded institutions in the UK, the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company were singled out in the report. The RSC featured no productions by female writers between December 2018 and September 2019, while 25% of the National’s plays were written by women from November 2018 to April 2019.

The 2012 research found 29% of new plays at the RSC were written by women, while 18% of plays at the National were by female playwrights.

Awards were another area of concern, with no new writing prizes awarded to female playwrights in 2018-19 at either the WhatsOnStage awards or the Olivier awards.

The report follows research by Loughborough University that found theatre criticism was another area dominated by men, with 10% of critics being female in 2017. The same study found that only 27% of university professors teaching theatre and drama were women.

Polly Kemp, the actor and founder of gender equality campaign group Era 50:50, said the research supported anecdotal accounts from female actors and directors, who have experienced sexism in UK theatre. “There’s still a sense that you’re taking a risk when you go with a woman,” she said. “The fact that we’re even still talking about it in 2020 should be shocking, but as an actor who is campaigning for increased representation, it doesn’t surprise me.”

The research comes in the same week that ACE published its 10-year strategic plan for the arts, which identified the “persistent and widespread lack of diversity across the creative industries and in publicly funded cultural organisations” as a key issue that needed to be addressed.

Sue Parrish, artistic director of Sphinx Theatre Company, said she was stunned by ACE’s lack of focus on gender in its strategy document. “Despite our efforts and reassurances that representation was being taken seriously, it clearly is not,” she said. “We are not listed in priorities or outcomes at all, there’s no separate reference made to 51% of the population. It’s extraordinary. I’m stunned.”

Asked if British theatre had an institutional problem with gender equality, Parrish said: “There is, and this document underlines it because the ACE seem to not be admitting it and certainly not addressing it.”

ACE said it required all the organisations it invests in to address the issues of inclusivity and relevance, including the position of women in the workforce and as creatives. “Organisations will be expected to set targets on how they will improve the diversity of their organisation and we will hold them to account on the progress they make,” a spokesperson said. “More details on this will be in our delivery plan, published later this year.”

Tuckett said ACE needed to do more to ensure gender equality was being taken seriously at British theatres, and said the 10-year strategy did not offer any “concrete solutions”.

She said women were largely overlooked in the strategy, whereas people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, deaf or disabled people, and those from black and minority ethnic backgrounds, were highlighted – supporting the study’s finding that ACE seems “focused more on addressing other protected characteristics than gender, whilst all should be addressed”.

Winsome Pinnock, a black British female playwright, said the lack of progress with artistic directors was significant because women in these roles, including Jules Wright – the late founder of the Women’s Playhouse Trust in 1984 – have been instrumental in her progress.

“I’ve been supported all my career, predominantly by women artistic directors,” she said. “I would not have a career if Jules Wright had not supported my work. I’ve got an upcoming new play called Rockets and Blue Lights at the Manchester Royal Exchange which was backed by Sarah Frankcom. They’ve had to fight for themselves and for us.”' (22)

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Lanre Bakare. (2020). Sexism and gender divide ingrained in UK theatre, study claims. Available: https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2020/jan/27/sexism-gender-divide-ingrained-uk-theatre-study-claims. Last accessed 2nd October 2020.

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http://purpleseven.com/media.ashx/gender-thought-leadership.pdf (23)

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Purple Seven (2015). Gender in Theatre. London: Purple Seven. p1-6.

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Why is there still a gender imbalance in theatre?

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Why is there still a gender imbalance in theatre?

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'I went to the Donmar the other night and saw My Night with Reg, which is brilliant, but it’s eleven male characters and not one woman walks on stage – and that’s so the norm.”

Mel Heslop is stating what is increasingly coming to be acknowledged as an unhealthy fact about theatre today: the continuing and significant imbalance between the genders. For instance, between 2003 and 2013 thirty one plays written by women were staged at the National Theatre out of a total of 206 productions. Similarly, just four female writers have ever won the Olivier Award for Best Play. Yet, according to the Society of London Theatres, women comprised sixty eight per cent of theatre audiences in 2010.

The latest reaction to the gender imbalance is not one of rage, and it is quieter than it has been at other points in time. The Vagina Monologues, which premiered in the late 90s, is still frequently performed, but more recent female-centric productions have avoided coming across so provocatively. In 2012 Phyllida Lloyd directed an all-female version of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar at the Donmar Warehouse in London. In October she will be doing the same thing with Henry IV, an amalgamation of the Henry IV, Part 1, and Henry IV, Part 2.

Another such female-centric production, though one that is not aggressive in the way feminism is sometimes stereotyped, is Win/Lose/Draw, currently showing at the Waterloo East Theatre. Built up of a series of three shorter plays, Win/Lose/Draw begins with two mothers waiting to see whether their daughters have made it into the finals of a beauty pageant. In the second section, a woman attempts to regain custody of her son, and in the final part two women, strangers to each other, bond over binge-eating. There are no bras flying or vaginas being discussed; the plays just explore female friendships.

“In the process of finding a venue, I showed the script to someone at a theatre who said, ‘It sounds entertaining but fundamentally it’s two women bickering and talking about puberty, and in the second part it’s two women talking about being a mum, and in the third thing it’s eating disorders – it’s just a massive cliché about women’,” recalls Lucy Eaton, who stars in Win/Lose/Draw alongside Heslop and Charlotte Purton.

“That is the problem,” she continues. “People are looking at plays like this and saying, ‘Eugh it’s just women talking about women issues.’”

“But it’s not a cliché,” Heslop adds, “because problems with eating and maternity and beauty are quite central to most women’s lives.”

“That is kind of what we all think about, because you have to if you live in this world,” Eaton continues for her co-star. “It’s not a cliché, it’s a fact.”

Win/Lose/Draw was written back in the Eighties, the era of the Aids crisis, Thatcher, and Duran Duran. Much has changed in the world, but in theatre, the role of women is not so different from what it was when Win/Lose/Draw premiered. “I’m not sure it’s changed much at all,” says Ara Watson, who co-wrote the plays with Mary Gallagher – the first two at the behest of the Actors’ Theatre of Louisville, and the third because of interest from commercial producers.

“I am a feminist and have proudly called myself that since I was in my late twenties,” Watson continues. “However, I never set out, in any of my writing, to write a ‘feminist’ piece.  I set out to write a good story with multi-faceted characters and I always want to write good lead roles for actresses of all ages.”

An obvious challenge stage actresses face, which Win/Lose/Draw does something to combat, is that many plays in English have far fewer parts for women than for men. It is not very surprising, since most English literature was written before feminism gathered strength – the English word was not coined until the late nineteenth century, more than three centuries after Shakespeare was born. Not to mention Christopher Marlowe, Ben Johnson, John Webster, and the hordes of other English playwrights whose works are still justifiably popular. Even Aphra Benn, one of the first prominent female authors, did not include a vast number of parts for women – The Rover, her most famous play, has twice as many male characters as female.

But there are other problems actresses face that have less to do with historical attitudes than contemporary ones. “It’s a standard thing, when you’re getting headshots done, people say, ‘Oh but you don’t look sexy in it’,” Heslop says. “I’m like, ‘Look, I don’t need to have a headshot where I’m’” – at this point she rolls her tongue as loudly and seductively as possible. “When I walk into the room, you get a strong whiny woman, not a sex goddess.”

The occasional association of actresses with prostitutes has not died off, either, which came to Eaton and Heslop’s attention because, as well as staging plays in theatres, they put on site-specific shows in people’s living rooms. “People are making jokes but they say, ‘So you’re saying I get a group of actresses to come to my house’,” says Heslop, “and I say, ‘No, we do a play and it’s very specific.’ Then they’re like, ‘So loads of actresses are coming to my house’.”

“And it’s not funny, and it’s really annoying,” she continues, sounding a little weary.

Female playwrights also have a difficult time, despite the fact that their job ought not to be bound up with historical attitudes. In 2011 going on 2012, the top ten subsidised theatres in London produced female-written plays less than thirty five per cent of the time. Moreover, in 2009 an American experiment, in which identical scripts were sent out to theatres, half with a female name at the top and half with a male name, showed that artistic directors and literary managers rated the apparently female-authored scripts less highly. Female directors and managers, incidentally, were found to be no less guilty than their male colleagues.

“Support for women playwrights, it seems to me, goes in cycles,” Watson says. “And it looks to me like we’re in another ‘up’ cycle now in this country [the USA], at least in terms of numbers of women writing and being produced. But it is still so far below the number of male writers it’s disheartening.”

“There are some amazing women getting produced,” she adds, “just not enough of them.”

Gallagher agrees with her erstwhile writing partner: “Despite there being so much more interest and opportunity, and so many playwrights, women and men, working in every conceivable style and exploring every subject you can think of or imagine, recent studies show what we already see, that most of the plays produced are written by men.”

The fault may not lie entirely with men, however. Eaton recalls how at university she and two female friends put on Yasmina Reza’s Art as an acting exercise. In the play, three male friends discuss a painting one of them has just bought, which is a white stripe on a white background, although the show is as much about friendship as about art.

“We just changed all the ‘he’s to ‘she’s and the ‘wives’ to ‘husbands’ – that’s literally all we did,” Eaton recalls. “Then we tried it and it was marvellous and it worked perfectly. None of it didn’t make sense.

“Then I remember reading an interview with the writer in which the interviewer asked what she would do if women decided to take on the play. And she replied, ‘I’d be absolutely furious. It’s a play about masculinity, no woman is ever allowed to do it – I’d never allow the rights for it.’

“And I thought, ‘What a shame that you do not understand the worth of what you’re writing and that women and men are not that different.’

“We did it and it was just as brilliant, so it’s fascinating that in her mind she had written a play about masculinity. I think that’s proof that there’s a lot of hang-ups people have got about plays about men and plays about women.”' (24)

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Alexander Woolley. (2014). Why is there still a gender imbalance in theatre?. Available: https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2014/09/why-there-still-gender-imbalance-theatre. Last accessed 2nd October 2020.

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Sexual harassment: Violence against women in the workplace.

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Sexual harassment: Violence against women in the workplace.

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Sexual harassment has been a fixture of the workplace since women first began to work outside the home. Although true epidemiological studies do not exist, large-scale surveys of working women suggest that approximately 1 of every 2 women will be harassed at some point during their academic or working lives. The data indicate that harassment is degrading, frightening, and sometimes physically violent; frequently extends over a considerable period of time; and can result in profound job-related, psychological, and health-related consequences. This article provides a brief review of the prevalence and consequences of sexual harassment and outlines social policy implications for research, legislation, and primary prevention.

The sexualized manner in which such behavior is most generally expressed is captured in early accounts such as that of Elizabeth Hasanovich, a factor worker who was so terrified of her boss after he attempted to rape her she never returned to collect her pay, although it left her destitute. Rosa Cohen, a 12-year-old immigrant, went to work in a garment factory where she learned her first English sentence—“Please keep your hands off”—from an older worker who protected herself with her needle from the boss who tried to assault her (Bularzik, 1978).

Stories such as these are the earliest published accounts of what has recently been recognized as a social problem of enormous proportions. Originally thought of as limited to situations in which women are threatened with losing their jobs to extort sexual cooperation, sexual harassment has become increasingly understood as any deliberate or repeated sexual behavior that is unwelcome to its recipient, as well as other sex-related behaviors that are hostile, offensive, or degrading.

Although it has been theoretically illegal since the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a legal definition of sexual harassment did not exist until 1980, when the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) issued its now well-known guidelines outlining two broad classes of prohibited behavior: attempts to extort sexual cooperation by means of subtle or explicit threats of job-related consequences (quid pro quo harassment) and pervasive sex-related verbal or physical conduct that is unwelcome or offensive (hostile environment) even absent tangible job consequences such as termination or loss of promotion (EEOC, 1980).

In the 13 years since these guidelines first appeared, a number of large-scale surveys have documented the widespread nature of sexual harassment (Culbertson, Rosenfeld, Booth-Kewley, & Magnusson, 1992; Fitzgerald et al., 1988; Gutek, 1985; Martindale, 1990, Saunders, 1992; U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board, 1981; 1987), surveys supplemented by smaller studies of specialized populations (e.g., Baker, 1989; Grieco, 1987; Gruber & Bjorn, 1982; Mazer & Percival, 1989; to name only a few). The legal framework of harassment has become increasingly well articulated (e.g., Alexander v. Yale, 1980; Ellison v. Brady, 1991; Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson, 1986; Franklin v. Gwinnett County School District, 1992; Robinson v. Jacksonville Shipyards, 1991; and awareness of the issue has been dramatically increased by a variety of high profile public events, most notably the confirmation hearings of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and the U.S. Navy Tailhook scandal.

(25)

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Fitzgerald, Louise F. (1993). Sexual harassment: Violence against women in the workplace.. American Psychologist. 48 (10), 1070-1076.

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Gender stereotyping and harassment: A 'catch-22' for women in the workplace.

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Gender stereotyping and harassment: A 'catch-22' for women in the workplace.

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In 1982, the Price Waterhouse accounting firm denied Ann Hopkins partnership despite her strong qualifications. To increase chances of future promotion, a partner advised Hopkins to “walk more femininely, talk more femininely, dress more femininely, wear make-up, have her hair styled, and wear jewelry,” implying that Hopkins’ counterstereotypic behavior and appearance marred her candidacy (Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins, 1989, p. 235). The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately ruled that denying Hopkins’ partnership was driven by gender stereotyping (termed “sex stereotyping” by the Court), violating Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Prior to Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins (1989) the Court heard other cases about the legality of sanctions toward those who fail to adhere to traditional gender stereotypes. In the early 1970s, Ruth Bader Ginsburg often litigated on behalf of male sex discrimination plaintiffs, even when the idea of sex discrimination againstmen was considered laughable by lawyers and judges (Franklin, 2010). Some legal theorists have argued that Ginsburg’s litigation of male sex discrimination cases may have, in fact, been strategic (e.g., Cole, 1984) and that her litigation strategy was instrumental in leading the Supreme Court to recognize sex stereotyping as actionable sex discrimination (Bornstein, 2012). According to Bornstein (2012, p. 1299):

Consistent with Ginsburg’s early construction of sex discrimination as based on stereotypes, jurisprudence under Title VII now recognizes a gender stereotyping theory, under which workplace penalties and harassment of individuals for failing to conform to gender stereotypes may be actionable sex discrimination.

Courts now recognize (such as in Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins) the illegality of sex stereotyping and disdain for a woman’s deviation from traditional gender stereotypes when it fuels formal discrimination in employment, or “discrimination in hiring, promotions, access, and resource distribution” (Fiske, Bersoff, Borgida, Deaux, & Heilman, 1991; Hebl, Foster, Mannix, & Dovidio, 2002, p. 816; see also overt discrimination,Dovidio & Gaertner, 2000; Gaertner & Dovidio, 1986). However, in the present study, we were interested in whether such sex stereotyping and intolerance for counterstereotypicality bred discrimination in the form of gender harassment. G

ender harassment consists of behaviors that belittle and demean individuals based on their gender. It is a specific subtype of sexual harassment that can, at times, rise to the level of a Title VII violation.

In psychological science, studies consistently find that women who work in male dominated contexts report more frequent sexual harassment, including gender harassment (see Willness, Steel, & Lee, 2007 for a meta-analysis). More recently, research suggested that women with “masculine personality characteristics” also experienced greater levels of sexual harassment (Berdahl, 2007a). Our research expands this literature by empirically identifying several counterstereotypic attributes (physical, behavioral, and contextual) that—additively and multiplicatively—affect harassment risk. Specifically, we examined how deviations from stereotypically “female” attributes—masculine appearance, masculine-typed behaviors (aggression and self-reliance), and work in a masculine context—and their potential interactions related to women’s experiences of two subtypes of gender harassment: sexist remarks and gender policing. Using these attributes, we explored competing theories regarding whether counterstereotypic characteristics increased or decreased women’s exposure to gender harassment.

In the following sections, we provide a brief overview of legal and psychological perspectives on gender harassment. In addition, we detail the rationale behind exploring competing paradigms.

Psychological Perspectives on Gender Harassment

Psychological research has found gender harassment to be the most common type of sexual harassment that women experience (Langhout et al., 2005; Leskinen, Cortina, & Kabat, 2011; Schneider, Swan & Fitzgerald, 1997). Gender harassment can include sexist remarks, comments about workplaces being a “man’s space,” pejorative terms of address, and crude behavior (e.g., displaying or distributing pornography). These actions are generally hostile and include behaviors that insult and reject women, without any intent of initiating a sexual relationship or sexual exploitation. Recently, researchers mapped the dimensions of gender harassment and found five underlying types of offending behaviors: sexist remarks, gender policing, crude behavior, infantilization, and policing of work/family boundaries (Leskinen & Cortina, 2014).

Consistent with the above research, the present study considered gender harassment a psychological construct (as opposed to a strictly legal process). For the sake of parsimony, our study focused on the two subtypes of gender harassment most relevant to gender stereotyping: sexist remarks and gender policing (detailed below).

In addition to gender harassment, psychological research generally has recognized two other subtypes of sexual harassment: unwanted sexual attention and sexual coercion (see Fitzgerald, Gelfand, & Drasgow, 1995; Gelfand, Fitzgerald, & Drasgow, 1995). Unwanted sexual attention refers to verbal and nonverbal “expressions of romantic or sexual interest that are unwelcome, unreciprocated, and offensive to the recipient (e.g., unwanted touching, pressure for dates or sexual behavior)” (Leskinen et al., 2011, p. 26). Sexual coercion—which roughly parallels the legal concept of “quid pro quo” harassment—involves actions that make the victim’s job or work conditions contingent on sexual cooperation (e.g., making a pay raise dependent on sex). Both unwanted sexual attention and sexual coercion are strikingly different from gender harassment, which lacks any hint of sexual interest.

Legal Perspectives on Gender Harassment

While sexual harassment has been recognized as an illegal form of sex discrimination for nearly 40 years (beginning with Barnes v. Costle, 1977), early cases were limited to “quid pro quo” situations, in which male bosses used job-related bribes and threats to pressure female subordinates to comply with sexual demands. However, in Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson (1986), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that even if sexual harassment does not threaten the victim’s job or benefits, it still constitutes actionable harassment if it creates a “hostile work environment.” This decision opened up the possibility that nonsexualized, gender-based harassment could violate Title VII, under certain circumstances.

In Harris v. Forklift Systems, Inc. (1993), the Supreme Court reaffirmed the standard set in Meritor, adding that an “objectively hostile or abusive work environment” is present when “a reasonable person would find [it] hostile or abusive,” and the victim subjectively perceives it that way. Of note, the female plaintiff in Harris alleged numerous instances of gender harassment, including remarks such as “You’re a woman, what do you know” and “You’re a dumb ass woman.”

In 1998, the Supreme Court provided further guidance about what constitutes sexual harassment in Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Services, Inc. (1998):

. . . harassing conduct need not be motivated by sexual desire to support an inference of discrimination on the basis of sex. A Trier of fact might reasonably find such discrimination, for example, if a female victim is harassed in such sex-specific and derogatory terms . . . as to make it clear that the harasser is motivated by general hostility to the presence of women in the workplace (p. 80).

In sum, United States law views gender harassment as a variety of “hostile work environment” harassment. This conduct becomes legally actionable, potentially contravening Title VII, when it meets the following criteria: (a) occurs “because of” the victim’s sex, with “sex” meaning femaleness rather than sexuality; (b) is so “severe or pervasive” that it adversely changes conditions of employment; and (c) produces a work environment that a “reasonable” person would find, and that the victim herself finds, hostile or abusive (Leskinen et al., 2011). Nevertheless, a woman can feel gender harassed in a psychological sense, even when no statutory violation has taken place (e.g., Fitzgerald, Swan, & Magley, 1997).

Defining (and Defying) Gender Stereotypes

Gender Stereotypicality of the Person

The terms masculinity and femininity are used frequently in social science research and everyday conversation; however, little agreement over their conceptual definitions exists. In 1973, Constantinople called them some of the “muddiest concepts” in psychology (Constantinople, 1973, p. 387). Spence (1984) suggested that masculinity and femininity “are amorphous concepts, rich in their connotations but left undefined and unanalyzed” (p. 62).

Despite definitional haze, masculinity and femininity remain central to our understanding of gender as something culturally constrained and stereotyped.

For the purposes of this study, masculinity (femininity) referred to traits, attitudes, and behaviors culturally associated with men (women) and the male (female) gender role. For instance, masculinity places value on competitiveness, dominance, risk-taking, logical thinking, and an athletic/strong build. Femininity is often conceptualized in opposition to masculinity, and emphasizes congeniality, emotionality, weakness, passivity, and attentiveness to physical appearance (e.g., long hair, slender build). In this way, gender—vis-à-vis masculinity and femininity—entails inward and outward components. Importantly, masculinity and femininity are both descriptive and normative: These concepts not only describe the traits, attitudes, and behaviors that are culturally associated with men and women, but also convey prescriptive messages about how men and women ought to think and behave (i.e., in ways “consistent” with their sex; Burgess & Borgida, 1999; Prentice & Carranza, 2002).

The present study focused on women’s performance of counterstereotypical, (i.e., masculine) characteristics. According to Collins (2004), social and cultural norms pressure women to adopt “an appropriately feminine demeanor” (p. 193), which includes the maintenance of feminine qualities, as well as the avoidance of masculine qualities.

These qualities reflect physical attributes (e.g., appearance) as well as behaviors and personality characteristics. Generally, women who “successfully” adhere to gender stereotypes (i.e., uphold femininity and avoid masculinity) enjoy better treatment than those who do not (Collins, 2004). Thus, when women perform masculinity—that is, adopt and express traits, interests, and behaviors culturally associated with men and the male gender role—they defy social expectations (i.e., femininity). This defiance is not without consequence.

Penalties for women’s displays of stereotypically masculine qualities manifest in a multitude of ways. For example, research on backlash effects has found negative reactions to counterstereotypical women across work contexts (see Rudman & Phelan, 2008).

Further, laboratory studies have indicated that observers rate assertive women more negatively than other women (e.g., Butler & Geis, 1990; Heilman, Wallen, Fuchs, & Tamkins, 2004). People are also more likely to express prejudice toward female leaders (Eagly & Karau, 2002).

Additionally, one experimental study found that women who were victorious in a contest drawing on stereotypically masculine knowledge were more likely to be sabotaged by their counterparts (Rudman & Fairchild, 2004).

Negative repercussions for counterstereotypic women are particularly visible within the workplace. For example, agentic women face discrimination in hiring (Rudman & Glick, 1999). In one study, women who engaged in self-promotion during interviews (a behavior more acceptable for men) were seen as competent, but also as less likable (Rudman, 1998). In fact, many of the personal qualities thought to be necessary for corporate success are qualities that women are punished for having (Heilman, Block, & Martell, 1995; Martell, Parker, Emrich, & Crawford, 1998). Thus, the effects of gender stereotyping in the workplace are severe, shaping major decisions such as hiring and promotions.

Professional penalties for counterstereotypic women also extend to sexual harassment.

As noted by Burgess and Borgida (1999), “the prescriptive component of the female stereotype is expected to lead to discrimination when women are judged to have violated, or to have behaved in a manner that is incongruent with, prescriptive aspects of the female stereotype” (p. 669). In this way, sexual harassment enforces adherence to stereotypical gender norms.

Demonstrating this empirically, across three studies Berdahl (2007a) found that women with more masculine-typed personalities (e.g., highly agentic, instrumental) received more gender harassment than other women, regardless of whether the “masculine” women also scored high on other stereotypically feminine traits. Berdahl (2007a) interpreted this harassment as a means of punishing gender norm violation. Put differently, even minor deviations from stereotypical gender roles can incur penalties.

Gender Stereotypicality of the Job

Gender-based stereotypes are not restricted to people; occupations carry gender stereotypes as well. In a classic study, Shinar (1975) found that, when making judgments about the gender-type of an occupation, people generally used two criteria: the gender proportion of those employed in the occupation and the personality traits believed to be necessary for that occupation. Regardless of how people made their determinations, they held beliefs about whether a particular occupation is “male” or “female.” Research has suggested that these beliefs are clearly defined and widely held. In one study, when people were asked to describe attributes of a job, over 60% of the time they listed the gender of the employee as an attribute (Glick, Wilk, & Perreault, 1995).

Male-typed jobs are widely believed to require characteristics that are contrary to those that are typical in women (according to descriptive gender stereotypes), and contrary to those that are appropriate for women (according to prescriptive stereotypes; Heilman, 2001). Women who are competent and successful in “male” occupations (e.g., upper-level management) violate these traditional stereotypes; as a result, they face personal derogation and rejection (Heilman, 2001). Further, in a vignette study, Yoder and Schleicher (1996) found that undergraduates tended to disparage women who succeeded in gender-incongruent professions. More specifically, they rated women electricians and electrical engineers as less likable, attractive, feminine, and “socially accepted” when compared with women nurses and daycare providers. Similar research found that people perceived women’s interpersonal qualities negatively when they defied gender stereotypes by succeeding in traditionally male occupations (Heilman et al., 1995); however, women were not similarly sanctioned for success in “female” jobs (Heilman et al., 2004). Also, women in gender-counterstereotypic professions are disproportionately punished for making mistakes. Brescoll, Dawson, and Uhlmann (2010) found that after making a single mistake, women in stereotypically masculine occupations were judged as more incompetent than female counterparts in feminine occupations.

Gender stereotyping of jobs also fuels the harassment of women. In their integrated model of sexual harassment, Fitzgerald, Drasgow, Hulin, Gelfand, and Magley (1997) theorized that a crucial antecedent of sexual harassment is the “job-gender context,” defined as “the gendered nature of the workgroup, for example, group gender ratio” (p. 579). Workgroups that are more masculine-gendered are those in which the women are among the first of their gender to perform their jobs, the supervisors are male, and the group contains more men than women. Aggregating across multiple studies, meta-analytic research found that job-gender context was an important predictor of sexual harassment prevalence, especially in nonmilitary settings (Willness et al., 2007). Sociological studies also have noted the significance of workplace culture, related to job-gender context and informed by patriarchy and gender norm socialization, in maintaining sexual harassment (e.g., Chamberlain, Crowley, Tope, & Hodson, 2008; Gruber, 1998). By and large, however, this research has analyzed “sexual harassment” as a global phenomenon. An important next step is to investigate whether and how gender stereotyping of persons and jobs relates to sexual harassment subtypes, including the various behaviors that comprise gender harassment.

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Leskinen, Emily A. Rabelo, Verónica Caridad. Cortina, Lilia M.. (2015). Gender stereotyping and harassment: A 'catch-22' for women in the workplace.. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law. 21 (2), 192-204.

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