The Conversation: Seven Women Discuss Work, Fairness, Sex and Ambition

“How Did We Get Here?

Emily Bazelon: Sexual harassment has been clearly against the law since the 1980s. The Supreme Court said in 1986 that employers couldn’t let one employee create a hostile work environment for another or base advancement on a quid pro quo for sex. And we had what I might call a kind of mini revolution in the early ’90s after Anita’s testimony about Clarence Thomas before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Women saw that all-white-and-male array of senators, and there was an uprising. We got mad, and we fought back. More women entered politics, and more engaged in politics. I think a lot of people felt as if we were making progress.

And yet here we are, many years later, and we’re having another, bigger moment of reckoning. We’re hearing new stories every day about men abusing their power at work in some sexual manner. Some of us are feeling radicalized — there’s a sense that a lot more needs to change in a fundamental way. Why is this all happening now?”