Like I said a month ago, it'll never reach up to snatch down a real baller - and by that exact same token - it'll never bend down to ease the working and living conditions of peasant women, either.
theatlantic | The man who Sandra Pezqueda says
sexually harassed her and ultimately got her fired has never been
disciplined for his actions. That’s even though the man, who was her
boss when she worked as a dishwasher and chef’s assistant at the
luxurious Terrenea Resort in Rancho Palos Verdes, California, beginning
in 2015, persistently switched her schedule so she’d be working alone
near him, repeatedly offered to give her more hours if she’d go out with
him, and twice tried to kiss her in a storeroom at work, according to
Pezqueda. That’s even though, when she complained about his behavior to
the staffing agency that employed them both, Pezqueda says supervisors
began seeking reasons to fire her, eventually letting her go in February
2016. “I knew if I spoke up there would be retaliation,” Pezqueda, now
37, told me. “That’s why other women never speak up about what happened
to them.”
For all the Harvey Weinsteins, Al Frankens, and Russell Simmonses who have lost their jobs after allegations surfaced of sexual harassment, there is a sobering truth often lost in the #MeToo movement—the push for accountability has class dimensions. Many other less famous men, who have harassed women in less high-profile fields, have not been held accountable. Virtually all of the men who have been publicly excoriated for their conduct have worked in industries like Hollywood, or politics, or law, that the public tends to study with laser-like focus. “If an employer isn’t worried that there’s going to be some huge public-relations issue stemming from harassment, then that is one less reason for the employer to take it seriously,” Emily Martin, the general counsel and vice president for workplace justice at the National Women’s Law Center, told me.
Sexual harassment happens just as frequently—if not more frequently—in industries dominated by low-wage workers, according to analysis
of Equal Employment Opportunity Commission data by the left-leaning
Center for American Progress. Half of women working in the restaurant
industry experienced “scary” or “unwanted” sexual behavior, according to
a 2014 report
from the Restaurant Opportunities Center, a nonprofit that advocates
for workers in the food-services industry. Around 40 percent of women in
the fast-food industry have experienced unwanted sexual behaviors on
the job, according to a 2016 study
by Hart Research Associates, and 42 percent of those women felt that
they needed to accept it because they couldn’t afford to lose their
jobs. Harassment is frequent in these industries because of the wage and
power differences between the women and the men who supervise them,
according to Sarah Fleisch Fink, the senior counsel for the National
Partnership for Women & Families, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit. “An
imbalance of power in people in two different positions is a big part
of sexual harassment occurring, and I think that there’s probably
nowhere that occurs more than in lower-wage jobs,” she said. According
to the Center for American Progress,
the most sexual-harassment charges filed by workers from any one
industry between 2005 and 2015 were in one sector: accommodation and
food services.
