Measuring the impact of #MeToo on gender equity
The #MeToo movement that erupted in the United States in 2017 has brought the important issue of gender-based violence and harassment in the workplace to the forefront of public attention. Three-and-a-half years later it’s hard to determine how much has actually changed for women.
A new study indicates that, at least in Hollywood, there has been some progress towards gender equity, the Harvard Business Review reports. Hong Luo and Laurina Zhang, professors at Harvard Business School and Boston University, respectively, analyzed data from 4,000 movie projects created before and after the MeToo revelations about producer Harvey Weinstein in October 2017.
They found that production teams who had worked with Weinstein hired 40% more women writers than before, and those female writers were more likely to work on films with male protagonists and protagonists that defied traditional gender stereotypes.
The authors of the study note that the increase was due mainly to teams that already included women, presumably because those women are now empowered to hire other women without the fear of being chastised. At the same time, all-male production teams didn’t decrease the number of women they hired.
Another interesting finding is that women writers also branched out beyond romance and drama to more lucrative categories like sci-fi and action, suggesting that new career opportunities opened up for them post MeToo.
While this was a narrow dataset focused on just one industry, the authors argue based on these findings that the #MeToo movement has in fact made a significant, positive impact on the representation and support of women in the workplace.
Covert forms of harassment are still there
However, a recent report by Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, about the state of Inclusion and Equity in TV Writing, has shown that things still are not so ideal.
Despite some respondents in the survey saying that overt sexual harassment has become harder to get away with following #MeToo and #TimesUpHollywood, covert forms of harassment and bullying are creeping into the workplace, especially with the shift to virtual rooms.
Many who report harassment face retaliation
And even though there may be more awareness around workplace sexual harassment after the MeToo movement, the issue of retaliation is still striking. A survey conducted by the National Women’s Law Center found that almost three-quarters of people in the U.S. reporting such harassment suffered from retaliation if they complained.
More than 7 out of 10 people who reported sexual harassment at the workplace said they faced some form of retaliation,including being fired, said the report, which analyzed 3,317 online requests for legal help from the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund, between January 2018 and the end of April 2020.
The number of people reporting retaliation was “shocking,” said Sharyn Tejani, director of the fund. “Retaliation takes all different forms,” she said. “Losing your job, losing shifts, losing pay – or if you’ve already lost your job, you can’t find another job in that industry.”
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