Ending Sexual Harassment: Protecting the Progress of #MeToo

ABSTRACT

How can we best protect and safeguard the progress of the #MeToo movement? This article presents 11 reforms designed to ensure the movement’s drive toward justice. These fall into three areas. The first concern process reforms designed to (a) protect all those involved—accusers and the accused—in investigations of sexual harassment, (b) end differential treatment of those found guilty, and (c) ensure punishments are commensurate with the crime and proportional in terms of other transgressors. The second set of reforms focus on transparency of the process, including clarifying (a) how to file charges, (b) who makes decisions, (c) relevant public information on how charges and procedures are followed, (d) what transgressions result in which punishments, and (e) how complaints are investigated to protect the rights and privacy of all. Finally, I address cultural issues that address (a) our portrayal of women, (b) our societal attempts to prepare young people so they can better protect themselves, and (c) attempts to encourage bystanders to intervene in the face of sexual harassment of others.     

Policy Learning and Transformational Change: University Policies on Sexual Harassment

ABSTRACT

This essay comes out of my experience as an attendee at the #MeTooPoliSci short course in the American Political Science Association meeting in 2018. I use the framework of policy feedback theory to explain the difficulty in reforming sexual harassment policies at universities and prescribe some actions we as scholars can take to improve the situations at our places of employment.     

Title IX: Help or Hindrance?

ABSTRACT

The goal of this article is to provide a practical guidance for anyone who has experienced sexual harassment or assault in academia and is considering the possibility of pursuing disciplinary measures by means of filing a Title IX complaint. Sexual harassment is an abuse of power by those who possess it against those who do not; the Title IX process does not remedy this power imbalance. And, academic institutions often have interests that compete with the welfare of their students, and which may enable harassers. We address some of the risks that the Title IX process may create for those who are already vulnerable, and suggest that some of the responsibility for enacting reforms should be taken up by professional associations. Because they often control professional journals and conferences, they could be effective advocates for a more fair and equitable educational environment if they choose to take a more active role in discouraging misconduct in their disciplines.     

Feminist social movements and whistleblowing disclosures: Ireland's Women of Honour

Feminist social movements based on workers disclosing sexual harassment and sexual violence have had a dramatic impact on workplaces worldwide. But what are the specific dynamics shaping organizations founded on acts of disclosure? Organizational whistleblowing research has overlooked this topic, while literature on feminist social movements has not, to date, focused on whistleblowing disclosure as a shared experience prompting collective action. In this article I address these lacunae. I isolate disclosure-based feminist movements (DFMs) as a specific, and important, organizational form, and I draw on relevant insights from whistleblowing theory to shed light on the dynamics therein. I find that first, DFMs are founded on a distinct kind of whistleblowing where members speak out about personally-experienced embodied violence. Second, movements are galvanized through affective connections formed through the sharing of such experiences, and third, the perceived credibility of individual disclosures are uniquely enhanced through the salience emerging from collective speaking. Extant whistleblowing theory—and literature on feminist social movements—fails to account for organizations based upon embodied and collective experiences of disclosure. In this article a novel theoretical framing based on feminist theory is developed, emphasizing embodied, affective forms of parrhesia involving collective salience that counters whistleblower reprisal. Ideas are illustrated throughout with insights from an exemplar case within the worldwide military #MeToo movement: Ireland's Women of Honour. Contributions for scholarship on feminist social movements and organizational whistleblowing conclude the article alongside insights for practice.     

The significance of feminist infrastructure: #MeToo in the construction industry and the green industry in Sweden

To better understand the interplay between digital activism and feminist infrastructure, this study investigates #MeToo activism in the Swedish construction industry and green industry. Both are industries in transition characterized by a dissonance between formal incentives, that encourage women and others to work in environments previously dominated by white men, and the informal power structures hosting a toxic masculinity. Based on media texts and interviews with key persons from the industries, the article situates #MeToo in a local context and shows how it was embedded in a supportive social, cultural, and technical infrastructure. In both industries, at the time of #MeToo this feminist infrastructure was already in place consisting of: an awareness of the problem of sexual harassment and abuse, knowledge of feminist explanatory models, established feminist online networks, and a supportive feminist culture, which together with widespread digital and feminist literacy became instrumental in the organization of the movement. Social media connected activists and created a critical mass by supporting the uniting of conflicting identity positions around shared differences. The established feminist infrastructure meant that the #MeToo activism, by articulating a widespread affective dissonance, pushed open doors that were already half open and forced them wide. This can explain some of the movement's success in Sweden.     

Silence‐breaking butterfly effect: Resistance towards the military within #MeToo

Systemic violence against women in the military has existed for decades, but they have mostly refrained from public resistance. However, in the context of the #MeToo movement in Sweden, 1768 women published a call for an end to violence and sexual harassment in the military. We analyse this call as a public resistance effort against the military and find that #MeToo is: (i) challenging the norms of the hyper‐masculine military organization, making resistance towards it visible; and (ii) resisting the practices of sexual harassment and lack of responsibility in the military organization. The military organization is questioned when it comes to norms and practices, but there are variations in whether the social order of the military is truly challenged. Still, the call highlights the fragmentation of this ‘last bastion of masculinity’. More research is needed on the erosion of the militarized norms and practices and the effects of the call.     

Breaking Out of the Ivory Tower: (Re)Thinking Inclusion of Women and Scholars of Color in the Academy

ABSTRACT

In this #MeToo moment, many women of color have called out those in power, namely men, who engage in sexual harassment and toxic masculinity. Furthermore, scholars, whose personal identities and research interests lie at the margins of gender, race, class, and sexuality, have drawn increasing attention to issues of gendered and racialized biases and harassment in the Academy. During our pre-conference session at the 2018 meeting of the American Political Science Association, we discussed substantive methods for reckoning with these conditions. We worked through the theoretical frameworks of Black Feminist and queer scholarship to orient ourselves toward actions that center the most marginalized. We identified methods for generating transformative solutions to campus and departmental problems facing students, faculty, and staff with intersectional identities. In all, the workshop proved both effective and generative for all in attendance, providing those present with concrete tools to build more equitable departments and classrooms.     

On agency and empowerment in a #MeToo world

In the midst of the #MeToo movement sweeping across different societies, what opportunities and challenges exist for changing extant gender structures and systems that have allowed for sexual harassment and assault to take shape? Such a discussion provokes questions around what kinds of feminisms, both as philosophical traditions and as a set of praxis/practices, enable societal and organizational change. This article focuses explicitly on different notions of agency deriving from various feminist traditions to underscore possibilities for engaging in such change. Borrowing from intersectional, decolonial, postcolonial and transnational feminist perspectives, I suggest that a collectivist approach to agency is necessary for gender system change. I coin collective feminism as a way to conceptualize agency that only becomes possible through the work of many and then discuss this mode of feminism in relation to empowerment and social change toward gender equality.     

#MeToo from a Department Head Perspective

ABSTRACT

In this essay I discuss some key ways in which sexual harassment policies have changed over time and provide advice to department leaders on handling and combatting sexual harassment. I encourage department leaders to know and understand how to implement the sexual harassment policies at their universities, follow through and be persistent, proactively train colleagues and students, and ensure due process for, and respect the humanity of, all parties involved.