I looked into the internal investigations that companies do when employees complain about sexual harassment and other workplace inequities. You can read the piece in The New York Times here.
Tag Archives: sexual harassment
My radio interview with Robin Morgan on my investigation of “FINRA’s Black Hole”
I was on Women’s Media Center Live with Robin Morgan today, talking about my investigation of 30 years of of sexual harassment complaints by women on Wall Street. You can listen to the interview here.
In 30 Years, Only 17 Women Won Sexual Harassment Claims Before Wall Street’s Oversight Boday
For victims of sexual harassment on Wall Street, the case of Kathleen Mary O’Brien was a bad omen.
In 1988, O’Brien, then a stockbroker at Dean Witter Reynolds, filed the earliest sexual harassment case we could find in a public database maintained by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Wall Street’s self-governing organization, which is overseen by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The year before, O’Brien had sued Dean Witter in Los Angeles Superior Court, but the brokerage firm successfully argued that she was legally bound to use Wall Street’s closed-door arbitration forum, then run by a FINRA predecessor, the National Association of Securities Dealers. The arbitrators’ decision in her case would turn out to be a common one in harassment cases over the following years: The claim was dismissed. The panel, offering no explanation as to how it came to the decision, charged her $3,000 in arbitration fees.
O’Brien’s case is one of 98 sexual harassment or hostile work environment claims and counterclaims made by women that The Intercept and the Investigative Fund found in the FINRA database over the past 30 years. You can read the full story here.
How Wall Street Silences Women
Among the business sectors largely absent from the current deluge of sexual harassment revelations is the financial services industry, a behemoth that employs 3.2 million people in the United States and is infamous for abuse and discrimination targeting women. In my story for The Intercept, I talk about women’s fate in finance and the reasons that most stay quiet. You can read it here.
Wall Street and high-tech sex harassment scandals offer a lesson for Hollywood: Change won’t happen quickly
Michael Hiltzik spoke with me for his story about the Harvey Weinstein sexual harassment scandal. You can read it here.
Ongoing Tales From the Boom-Boom Room
WNYC’s Richard Hake spoke with me about the Harvey Weinstein sexual harassment scandal and how it relates to my work on sexual harassment on Wall Street. You can hear the interview here.
Sterling Jewelers Suit Casts Light on Wider Policies Hurting Women
Lawyers and academics who specialize in gender discrimination say the documents recently released in a class-action against Sterling Jewelers provide a rare insight into how a company’s policies work in real life. In my article in The New York Times today, I examine the problems with not-so-confidential tip lines and in-house courts run by employers, and the ways they can mask problems that women often face in the workplace. You can read it here.
How Uber Got the Message About Sexual Harassment
Former Uber engineer Susan Fowler sure got our attention with her 3,000-word essay about the brushoff she got from Human Resources when she reported sexual harassment. Her blog post went viral and Uber went into crisis mode, apologizing to employees and hiring big-gun former U.S. Attorney Eric Holder to do an investigation
Some women get stuck in a frustrating he-said-she-said when they report harassment to HR, but Fowler said in her essay that she came armed with evidence. What more is there to say when you show up with screenshots of chat sessions that memorialize your boss’s come-ons?
Open-and-shut case? Not exactly. Fowler says they told her it was all just an “innocent mistake.” Yes, really. I wrote about it today for CNN.com. Here’s a link.