Stop sexual assault in the workplace

Employers have the to maintain a workplace free of sexual assault. Not only is this a legal obligation, and good for business, but sexual assault spreads like a cancer. People start thinking it’s ok. You will pay a toll in employee morale, productivity, and non-stop lawsuits.

I’ve been reading about the Robert Frucher case. This is the perfect example of sexual assault and the accuser is afraid to make her self-known.

Retaliation is a major concern. If you talk to your supervisor, which is often your abuser, you won’t get far. Under no circumstances should reprisals be allowed. In a large business this could eventually be established. But in small businesses where the owner is also the manager, you have no chance having your voice heard.

#MeToo has changed the landscape of sexual abuse. While it was accepted as illegal, it never became taboo like it is today. Workplace sexual harassment is pervasive. This can be the opportunity for us all to finally change how things are done. The way Covid allowed us to revolutionize social medicine, so does #Metoo allow us to change the workplace. It’s a cataclysmic event that was horrible but will lead to meaningful, good change.

As we hear about high profile men being accused, there has been a cultural shift. It’s not just in the workplace. It’s in everything. You can watch the news, a movie, or a television show, and these act as almost sexual harassment seminars. People now know instinctively to report any sexual harassment.

C. Brady Wilson, PhD, a psychologist in Scottsdale, Arizona, says, Companies still have a knee-jerk reaction to sexual harassment complaints, but it’s the coworkers and culture that is allowing us to attack this problem head on.

How to spot sexual harassment:

Sexual harassment starts with subtle action—it could be a comment, invitation, a “harmless” touch. But it always escalates. People get bold when. Victims accept it because it’s just a little bit more. Eventually the line is crossed, and you’ve been assaulted.
RAIN gives us a list of what’s considered sexual harassment.

• The abuser makes sexual favors, either explicitly or implicitly, a way to advance in the company.
• Any unwanted touching.
• Any requests for sexual favors.
• Any courtship or sexual advances.
• Discussing anything of a sexual nature. Even if it’s just a reference to a body part. It doesn’t matter if it is a joke.
• Feeling pressured to engage with someone sexually.
• Exposing of a body part normally clothed in an office environment.
• Unwanted sexually-based photos, emails, or text messages.

What to do when sexually harassed:

If you or anyone you know has been sexually assaulted, The New York Times give us a great guide on what to do. They say you need to Document everything, Assess the situation, Take action.
You can read more about it here:
NYTimes – What to do if you are sexually harassed.

CONCLUSION
The courts system has always been the one to decide on how business handle harassment. Rates of sexual harassment hasn’t changed for decades. Training sessions don’t work. Harsh laws don’t work. What works is a cultural shift where everyone knows about sexual harassment and everyone is ready to act on it. This is a change that will come from the bottom up. I, for one, have high hopes that we can eradicate sexual harassment in the work place once and for all.

Helping The Poor

It turns out to be difficult for academics at universities to carry out studies far away with the level of detail that good scientific trials require. You need reliable staff on the ground who understand the science but who also have the social skills to work with partners and manage field operations.

By 2002, as I was starting out as a professor, I founded a nonprofit called Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) to help fill these knowledge gaps in finance, health, education, food, and peace and postconflict recovery. IPA connects my curious number-crunching academic colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Yale University, and the like, with a trained staff of more than 500 people working in 18 countries on randomized controlled trials. We have now conducted upward of 500 trials. A chief insight has been that simple interventions that take human behavior into account can have outsized effects. Putting chlorine dispensers right next to water sources, to make it easy to remember and publicly observable, increases use of clean water sixfold. Adding a simple bag of lentils to a convenient monthly immunization camp for families in India roughly sextuples rates of full immunization for kids (while making the entire process cheaper because more families show up). And cheap and simple text message reminders can be effective in helping people accomplish their goals, from saving money to completing their medication regimens. Naturally not everything works. We must figure out what works and what doesn’t.

We have also learned that information is only part of the solution. Having strong relationships with local governments, nonprofits, businesses and banks keeps the academic experts working on questions that matter and gets answers into hands of the people who can use them.

Over the years microloans kept nagging at my colleagues and me. Fifteen years after my first study attempt in South Africa, we now have seven randomized trials completed on traditional microloans and one on consumer lending back in South Africa. The seven projects are spread out around the world and have been conducted by different researchers with similar research designs: in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ethiopia, India, Mexico, Mongolia, Morocco and the Philippines. These studies found some benefits of microloans, such as helping families weather hard times, pay off goods over time and even make small investments in businesses. But there was no average impact on the main financial well-being indicators—income and household and food expenditures. To the chagrin of microloan critics, there also were no big negative effects.

So what does work to increase income for the world’s poorest?

We just recently studied another program that addresses some of the shortcomings of microloans. One sad failure of many programs (including microloans) has been in reaching the poorest of the poor—known in the field as the ultrapoor. They live on less than what $1.25 would buy in the U.S. a day, and they account for more than a billion people, or one seventh of the world’s population. The things keeping them poor are usually complicated enough that no one individual fix is going to help, but one program being run in Bangladesh by BRAC, the world’s largest nonprofit organization, and a few other places stands out. It saw extreme poverty as a complex problem deserving of a complex solution.

Aegis Foundation Sponsors

We, the Aegis Foundation are committed to help the vulnerable, needy, underserved, and imperiled youth plan, prepare and focus on education. We are a resource for our youth to inspire dreams, create leaders and provide scholarships for continuing education.

Aegis Foundation believes we can reclaim the shaping of today’s seemingly forgotten youth by giving them back their livelihoods, getting them off the streets and back into supportive environments. We work in conjunction with these organizations to support and motivate these children to give them back what’s left of their childhood and prepare them for a healthy, responsible, and productive life. We take a special interest in serving and partnering with our local communities.

Aegis Foundation prides itself on being original in connecting with community partners, pairing youth with our community partners, innovative programs, and raising funds to secure scholarships.

Sponsor a child in need.

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