Northwestern University and Evanston's Only Daily News Source Since 1881

The Daily Northwestern

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Northwestern University and Evanston's Only Daily News Source Since 1881

The Daily Northwestern

Northwestern University and Evanston's Only Daily News Source Since 1881

The Daily Northwestern

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Zeitlin: Working women deserve respect in the office

With at least five accusers, three who have gone public, and two settlements paid out by the National Restaurant Association, it seems clear that Herman Cain has a problem with women in the workplace. The most recent and graphic public accusation, this one by Sharon Bialek, asserted when she went to Cain to discuss future employment (she was a former National Restaurant Association employee), they got in a car, and while in it, Bialek alleges “he suddenly reached over and put his hand on my leg, under my skirt, and reached for my genitals. He also grabbed my head and brought it towards his crotch.” When Bialek told him to stop, Cain allegedly said, “You want a job, right?”

Sexual harassment is clearly a problem, and it’s a subset of the even larger problem of women being discouraged from entering or advancing in prestigious fields, like finance, the upper echelons of the law science, technology and engineering.

The solution to this problem is not just better procedures for dealing with harassment claims and better education about what constitutes a hostile work environment – both of which have been improving for decades. We need something more radical. Insist, from the top down, that male-dominated workplaces hire and promote more women.

Young women at the beginning of their careers are the most vulnerable and thus the most attractive to predatory or inappropriate supervisors. Moreover, because of the difficulty of proving these allegations and the inherent power imbalances at play, many women do not report these incidents for fear of not being believed, jeopardizing their career or just not wanting to get tied up in court. They shrug it off, confide in their friends and move on. Talk to almost any woman and you’ll find a story of boorish behavior, inappropriate comments or unwanted advances.

If you simply had more women in supervisory and management roles, the problem of male sexual harassment of women would be alleviated to a large degree. Moreover, with a concerted effort to get better female representation from the shop or trading floor to the boardroom, the need for explicit quotas or specific recruitment would lessen over time.

As more young women see other women succeeding in fields that were previously thought of as all-male, more will think about going into those fields in the first place. Many female pioneers in previously all-male organizations mention how encouraged and relieved they are to see the ranks below them fill up with more and more women.

This would also have a beneficial effect for the organizations that become increasingly female. Because women are, after all, half of all people, we can assume that around more or less half of all people who have the potential to excel at a given job are women.

Inasmuch as a woman with an aptitude for math and design feels discouraged from entering engineering because she’s leery of being in an almost all- male environment, the individual and the field of engineering lose out.

This is why we should welcome, within reason, more women at the top of any and all fields. And who knows, maybe one day we’ll have male subordinates complaining about an eccentric female pizza CEO turned lobbyist turned presidential candidate saying inappropriate things to them.

But I doubt it.

Matthew Zeitlin is a Weinberg senior. He can be reached at [email protected].

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Zeitlin: Working women deserve respect in the office