Sexual harassment

Tarana Burke was shocked when a 13-year-old girl revealed she had been sexually abused by her mother’s boyfriend. Tarana said: ‘I didn’t have a response or a way to help her in that moment, and I couldn’t even say “me too.” It really bothered me, and it sat in my spirit for a long time’. In 2006, Tarana formed Just Be Inc., a not-for-profit organisation to help victims of sexual harassment and assault. She also formed a movement which she called Me Too. It was not until the following year, 2007, that the use of hashtags to denote groups became fashionable in social media. Tarana is an African-American woman. Her campaign had relatively little impact for 10 years. But in October 2017, over 80 women accused US film producer Harvey Weinstein of sexually abusing them. In response, actress Alyssa Milano posted a message on her Twitter account saying: ‘If all the women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted wrote “Me Too” as a status, we might give a sense of the magnitude of the problem’. Social media has the ability to amplify social messages (1 ! 2 ! 4 ! 8 ! 16 ! 32, etc.) in a similar way to how the polymerase chain reaction amplifies nucleic acid messages. This gives the term ‘to go viral’ a particular poignancy for an infectious disease physician. More than a million women in the USA, Europe and elsewhere have used the #MeToo hashtag to post their experiences. In Spain, they tweeted #YoTambien (me too) and in France #balancetonporc (expose your pig). Facebook says that within 24 h of Alyssa Milano’s post, 4.7 million people around the world participated in the #MeToo conversation, and there were over 12 million posts, comments and reactions. Many women have expressed how cathartic they found it to have an avenue to share their experiences with other victims. An important question is whether or not this will lead to real change. Over 20 years ago, Yale psychologist John Bargh conducted a research which identified men who scored high on an anonymous questionnaire regarding their likelihood to use their power over women to extract personal favours. If these men were primed by word-association with words like ‘authority’, ‘boss’ and ‘power’ they were more likely to find a woman attractive than if primed with neutral words. Priming with power words had no effect on men who scored low on the questionnaire. Bargh views sexual harassment from the perspective of general misuse of power. The relevance to paediatricians is that sexual harassment is rife in the medical workforce. In a survey of over a thousand US academic medical faculty, 30% of women but only 4% of men reported having personally experienced sexual harassment. Of the 150 women who reported any harassment, the most common were sexist remarks or behaviour (92%), but women also reported unwanted sexual advances (41%), coercive advances (9%) and subtle bribery (6%) or threats (1%) to engage in sexual behaviour. In a commentary on the relevance of #MeToo to medicine, Reshma Jagsi commented that none of the medical women who contacted her had previously revealed the abuse they suffered. Some had questioned their self-worth and wondered if they brought it on themselves. Women who do report sexual harassment experience marginalisation, retaliation, stigmatisation ‘and worse’. When women do complain, their careers suffer. It is not surprising women keep quiet about abuse. Women who report sexual harassment should be listened to and offered support. Sexual harassment is a toxic form of workplace bullying, and victim-blaming is a common theme in bullying. The culture of victim-blaming in sexual harassment and in bullying complaints needs to end. Jagsi describes how academic astronomers have developed a formal rescue system, whereby senior female astronomers at national meetings wear buttons identifying them as ‘astronomy allies’. Their attention is to be readily available to rescue any