Five years on, here’s what #MeToo has changed

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Oct 14, 2022 View in browser   By Jamillah Bowman Williams and Elizabeth Tippett POLITICO illustration / Photo by AP Good morning, rulers! Katie here, but I'll be turning it over to a pair of guest contributors momentarily. Email me at kfossett@politico.com. Thank you to Maya Parthasarathy for your help putting the newsletter together! Now from our guests, Jamillah Bowman Williams and Elizabeth Tippett … Five years ago this month, a single tweet from actress Alyssa Milano inviting women to use activist Tarana Burke's iconic phrase "Me Too" went viral, unleashing waves of public accusations against high-profile men for sexual misconduct. As law professors who study workplace harassment, we worried at the time that the stories dominating the headlines — of bad men who did bad things without consequence — would distract from more systemic problems that contribute to harassment and discrimination We wondered whether the #MeToo movement would offer meaningful reform for working women. Five years later, the short answer is "yes." A flurry of legislation related to gender equity in the workplace has been introduced in recent years. Our team of researchers and lawyers at Georgetown University and the University of Oregon have collected over 3,000 state and federal bills from 2016-2022, some of which passed into law. While our research continues, here are the first and clearest takeaways of how the #MeToo movement has had a real impact on our legal system. State legislatures have been busy The #MeToo movement did not have much success at the federal level, although it produced a major piece of legislation: the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act of 2021. By contrast, state legislatures have been a hotbed of activity, as a combination of online conversation,worker walkouts,historic strikes, and other types of advocacy pressured lawmakers to act. Between 2017 and 2021, states introduced 2,324 #MeToo-related bills and passed 286. In late 2017 and early 2018, many of the laws focused specifically on sexual harassment, including topics like antiharassment training, NDAs, and accountability for government officials. This mirrored the media headlines focusing on high-level perpetrators and sexual misconduct. Figure 1: Number of bills introduced and passed during 2016-2021 Source: Gender Equity Legislation Database. Graphic: Angelica Sanchez Diaz By 2019, reforms addressed a broader range of women's rights issues, such as pay equity. Other hot topics include family, sick and pregnancy leave and occupation-specific protections for women in vulnerable sectors like hospitality, food service, and domestic work. Examples include bills requiring panic buttons for hotel workers and a domestic workers' bill of rights. Figure 2: Number of bills passed by topic Source: Gender Equity Legislation Database. Graphic: Angelica Sanchez Diaz While the bulk of the new protections were enacted in blue states like California and New York, swing states such as Virginia and red states such as Texas and Louisiana also introduced and passed a substantial number of bills addressing workplace harassment and gender equity. Maps: Number of bills introduced and passed by state Map A: Number of bills introduced Map B: Number of bills passed Source: Gender Equity Legislation Database. Graphic: Angelica Sanchez Diaz "Swiss cheese" approach to harassment We find these developments quite promising. Harassment, like other systemic problems, demands a multilayered approach to make progress over time. The "swiss cheese" analogy frequently invoked for reducing Covid transmission — combining multiple public health interventions such as vaccines, masks and social distancing — also applies to problems like workplace harassment. No single intervention — like improving employer training or policies — will prevent all harassment. But multiple interventions can make a lasting difference, particularly when they reduce gendered power dynamics that make harassment more likely. Successful state reforms can spread State experimentation and innovation can also lay the groundwork for future progress. One benefit of a federal system is that states can try out new legislative ideas to see if they work. Successful models can be copied and refined in other states. Of course, a patchwork of state laws also means that women in some states have far fewer protections than those in others. Nevertheless, popular state legislation can also serve as the basis for future federal legislation. And the presence of new laws across many states suggests there may be more bipartisan support for #MeToo related measures than previously assumed. Still work to do Despite the gains we have described, there is still much work to be done particularly to help workers most marginalized by gender equity issues. For example, domestic workers are disproportionately immigrant women of color, who face high levels of abuse, yet remain unprotected by federal harassment law if they work for individual families. Additionally, state pay equity legislation rarely accounts for the racial and ethnic pay gap that fuels compounding disparities for Black women and Latinas. Black women, for example, are estimated to lose nearly $1 million potential dollars over the course of their careers. For low-wage workers — whose ranks disproportionately include women of color — the bigger issue is simply making ends meet. Nearly half of all women of color working in low-wage positions lived in or near the poverty line in 2018. Broadly, our results suggest that the #MeToo movement galvanized state legislatures to act and that the movement has come to encompass a broader array of gender-based reforms, going far beyond the Harvey Weinsteins and Bill Cosbys that launched this conversation five years ago. Jamillah Bowman Williams is a professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center, a BiGS Faculty Fellow at Harvard Business School and faculty director of the Georgetown Workers' Rights Institute. Her research focuses on contemporary bias, the effectiveness of antidiscrimination law and the capacity of law to promote compliance and social change. Elizabeth Tippett is an associate professor at the University of Oregon School of Law whose research focuses on employment law and employment practices. She also studies law, technology and consumer decision-making.  The rest of the newsletter comes from Maya ...   Sponsored by Business Leader members of Women Rule: The Exchange: What if we could reshape society to benefit everyone equally? POLITICO Focus connected with members of Women Rule: The Exchange to learn about how women are remaking communities into sustainable, healthy and inclusive places. Join the Conversation.   POLITICO Special Report Kaelin Mendez/Getty Images "Secret tapes expose LA's racial fault lines — and give Bass an edge," by Alexander Nieves and Lara Korte for POLITICO: "Rep. Karen Bass, a former community activist who was at the epicenter of the 1992 Rodney King riots, built her reputation working across racial lines. Suddenly, her résumé is more relevant than ever. "A secretly recorded backroom conversation has snapped LA's long history of racism into focus in a mayoral contest previously dominated by issues of homelessness and crime. The still-developing situation, which exploded over the weekend with the recording's release, has the potential to disrupt not only the race but how the winner governs the nation's second-largest city. "'I think it has changed everything,' LA City Councilmember Curren Price said in an interview. 'It has disillusioned a lot of folks.' "If Bass defeats billionaire developer Rick Caruso, she will be the first Black woman to lead LA — and get the chance to be a peacemaker in her bitterly divided hometown. "The surreptitiously recorded conversation, which took place more than a year ago, captured three council members and a labor leader using racist language to mock a Black child and discuss bending the city's redistricting process in their favor. Council President Nury Martinez — who resigned her seat Wednesday afternoon — was recorded calling the Black son of a fellow council member a 'changuito' (Spanish for 'little monkey') and comparing him to an accessory. "Throughout her campaign, Bass has pitched herself as someone with boots-on-the-ground experience, drawing on her time with the Community Coalition, a group she co-founded in 1990 with the goal of uniting Black and Latino communities to fight poverty, addiction and crime in South LA. Until this week, however, race relations had not featured prominently in the contest. … "There's broad consensus in Los Angeles that the next mayor will not only be expected to restore faith in a scandal-plagued City Hall, but heal racial division. It's a daunting task for the most skilled of community organizers and politicians, and the expectations for Bass are high. If she misses the mark, she risks prolonging the public's distrust in its leaders and damaging her own political reputation." " Indiana Supreme Court allows abortions to continue pending January hearing," by Megan Messerly for POLITICO: "The Indiana Supreme Court issued an order on Wednesday that will allow abortions to continue in the state while it considers whether new abortion restrictions violate the state's constitution. "In its order, the state Supreme Court denied a request from Republican Attorney General Todd Rokita to allow the law to take effect pending a court ruling. The law — which was the first anti-abortion bill to be signed after the fall of Roe v. Wade — took effect on Sept. 15 but was paused when a lower court judge issued a preliminary injunction a week later. "While it declined to lift the injunction, the Indiana Supreme Court did agree to Rokita's request to take the case and scheduled oral arguments for January." "Voters locked in on candidates despite abortion allegations," by Brittany Gibson for POLITICO   Sponsored by Business Leader members of Women Rule: The Exchange: In the Round: A conversation with today's leaders.   Number of the Week Read more here. MUST READS Sarah Ann Masse, who has accused Harvey Weinstein of misconduct, speaks to the media with other accusers outside the court on January 6, 2020 in New York City. | Kena Betancur/Getty Images "More than a 'Weinstein survivor': Women continue to reclaim their voices five years after #MeToo," by Jennifer Gerson for The 19th: "So much of the reporting that led to charges being brought against [Harvey] Weinstein relied on women stepping forward to share some of their darkest moments. In seemingly countless interviews, alleged Weinstein survivors told their stories, paving the way for others to find their voices in Hollywood and beyond. "But their names and individual identities are still so often erased. As more and more people tell the story of what happened with Weinstein, the individual people — their lives, their experiences — can feel diminished. Survivors told The 19th that often, articles, TV segments, books and movies about Weinstein are done without anyone reaching out to them. The women who came forward one by one in 2017 to end the code of silence still often feel silenced themselves. "As Weinstein's second trial began in Los Angeles County this week, the 'Silence Breakers' are once again living through a barrage of coverage of their alleged perpetrator. Weinstein faces trial in Los Angeles for 11 charges — four counts of rape and seven counts of sexual assault — that carry a maximum sentence of 140 years. Though Weinstein was convicted of first- and third-degree rape as part of his first New York trial in 2020, he was granted an appeal last month and will have a new trial in 2023. "Five years after so many women shared their stories with the world, four of them— Caitlin Dulany, Louisette Geiss, Larissa Gomes and Sarah Ann Masse, who were all involved in a civil class action suit filed against Weinstein — spoke to The 19th about building identities separate from the often nameless 'Weinstein survivors.' These women, regularly denied the chance to show their full selves and tell their own stories, do so here in their own words, navigating what it means to find safety and self in the face of widespread public attention, and criticism, five years after #MeToo went viral." "When is a doctor not a doctor? Often, when patients address women physicians," by Jayne Williamson-Lee for Stat News: "In her inbox on the Mayo Clinic patient portal, the dermatologist Jamison Harvey receives some messages from patients that read more like a casual text to a friend than a request for medical expertise: 'Hey Jamison, can you look at this spot?' "She introduces herself to patients as Dr. Harvey, the title she's earned over 12-plus years of medical training. Yet, even after her introduction, they might still address her by her first name. Curious, Harvey and colleagues embarked on a study comparing the experiences of other doctors. "Their findings, published recently in the Journal of the American Medical Association: Between men and women physicians, 'there's a pretty big mismatch in the formality of the titles,' Harvey said. Women physicians were more than twice as likely as their male colleagues to have patients omit their 'Doctor' titles when addressing them. … "For Lekshmi Santhosh, an associate professor of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at UCSF, the study underscores the inequitable and often uncompensated nature of working in the electronic medical record. Previous work has found women physicians already receive a higher volume of patient messages than their male colleagues, spending more time after hours catching up on these messages. 'Women physicians are in this impossible bind of running behind on clinical work… in the context of working so hard, spending so much more time and taking such care to craft a reply to each one of these messages, to then get a dismissive reply with your first name is quite jarring,' she said. "The omission of these women doctors' titles (or 'untitling') is subtle, but these remarks accumulate among other experiences of bias in medical settings into what Santhosh and colleague Leah Witt described as 'death by a thousand cuts' in an accompanying commentary of the study in JAMA. This can ultimately lead to burnout and attrition in the medical workforce." "Angela Lansbury Shimmered Through the Decades," by Michael Schulman for the New Yorker   Sponsored by Business Leader members of Women Rule: The Exchange: As indispensable members of the workforce, champions of civic engagement, and powerful consumers, women support and invest in the communities they inhabit. However, with racial injustice, major disparities in health care, steeper corporate ladders and more, it's easy to question if their communities are reciprocating. But what if we could reshape society to benefit everyone equally? Women would run for office in higher numbers. Health care treatments would be more accessible. Cities and systems would be designed to meet the needs of the most vulnerable. We know what our communities could be. But how do we pursue the paths to achieve it? POLITICO Focus sat down with members of Women Rule: The Exchange to create a blueprint for movements and transformation — and a roadmap to a reimagined future. Read on to learn how women are remaking communities into places that are sustainable, healthy and inclusive.   Quote of the Week Read more here. Transitions  Brittany Bramell Punaro, former head of public affairs for the CIA, and Lauren Claffey Tomlinson, former head of strategic comms for DHS, are launching Steer PR, a strategic comms and critical issue advisory firm. … Kara Kennedy is now a staff writer at The Spectator's world edition. She previously was an editorial graduate at the Telegraph (h/t Playbook) … Former Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) has been named director of the University of Chicago Institute of Politics, taking over from David Axelrod. … Natalie Giordano is joining Invariant as director of external comms. She previously was at Purple Strategies. (h/t Playbook)   The Women Rule series brings together rising stars, accomplished professionals, and women at the pinnacle of their careers to inform, empower and connect women across diverse sectors and career levels. Attendance to our quarterly in-person POLITICO Women Rule meetings, is by invitation-only. Join our interest list and learn more here .       Follow us on Twitter Katelyn Fossett @KatelynFossett   Follow us

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