The Weinstein Effect strikes again. Following The New York Times and The New Yorker’s revelations about the film executive and alleged serial sexual harasser Harvey Weinstein, Lockhart Steele of Vox Media, the screenwriter James Toback, the critic Leon Wieseltier, and, on Thursday, Mark Halperin of MSNBC have found themselves outed and, in some cases, fired for alleged past behavior. Preceding Weinstein were reports about alleged harassment at Tinder and Uber, and the alleged predatory behavior of Bill O’Reilly, Donald Trump, and Bill Cosby, among others. Many more disclosures are likely to come, as the politics, technology, news, and entertainment industries come to terms with the pervasive problems of gender discrimination and sexual harassment in their ranks.
Of course, those industries are hardly the only ones in which harassment is a big problem—indeed, they are not outliers in the American workforce. Up to 85 percent of women say that they have been sexually harassed at work, according to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The problem appears to be particularly acute in service industries, in which employees rely on tips and interface frequently with customers; in low-wage industries, in which employees have little power to begin with; and in industries dominated by men, like construction.
Why aren’t these industries at the forefront of the current conversation, then? The answer seems to be in part because of the public scrutiny and media attention they receive, and the momentum that builds as more and more victims come forward with their stories. There are big names in politics and Hollywood and the news, and there is consistent interest in what is happening at the Ubers and Apples and Googles of the world. High-profile women, like Gretchen Carlson, Megyn Kelly, and Gwyneth Paltrow, have shared their accounts. A trucking supervisor getting fired or a waitress getting better workplace protections rarely merits a headline.
[For more on this story by ANNIE LOWREY, go to https://www.theatlantic.com/bu...ntertainment/544068/]
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