Thoughts of the week

This Harvey Weinstein scandal is fascinating. It's not just him and the film industry though, it happens everywhere, in every industry.

It happens to women so often that we think it's normal and shrug it off as nothing, but it's not nothing and it's not okay. We need to stand up and not let behaviour like this be accepted. We need to do this for our children and our children's children. Men need to stand up too. 

Society as a whole needs to stand up and say that the mistreatment of women is unacceptable and should stop. A women should be able to go about her daily business without the threat of sexual harassment.

Through my career it's happened to me and on none of those occasions did I speak out. The first time it happened was at my first full time job. I was 16, vulnerable and naive. I worked at a shoe shop. My boss, Adrian, was a chauvinist pig of a man. Every time I was up the ladder getting shoes, he'd come to talk to me so that he could look up my skirt. It only stopped when I "accidentally" kicked him in the face. Hah. 

After that he started coming up behind me and putting his arms around me. That stopped when I elbowed him in the belly. I didn't say anything to anyone about those incidents, in fact I didn't think much of them at all, it was just one of those things that happen to women. 

Years later I worked with a federal police officer. I had to go to him to ask for information I needed for my investigations. He wouldn't give me the information for at least half an hour because he wanted to talk to me. It wasn't work talk, it was just personal chat. Not appropriate. I told my supervisors but nothing was done. Unsurprising.

The worst case I had was a boss who harassed myself and our entire team on an ongoing basis for about two years. His behaviour with me was totally inappropriate. Despite being married, he decided he was in love with me and acted like a stroppy, lovesick teenager. I never encouraged him, in fact I actively discouraged him, to no avail. 

The deputy manager suspected something inappropriate was going on so he spoke to my boss, but never spoke to me or the rest of the team. 

When he finally left I gave a file full of evidence to the deputy manager. Why didn't any of us say anything? Because we knew if we did he'd get away with it and we would ruin our careers. So we stayed silent. 

It's time we all woke up, stood up and stopped things like this happening. We should not be silent. It's time to make a change.