Patrick Durkin* says Tracey Spicer’s leadership has been instrumental in Australia’s contribution to the worldwide reckoning over sexual misconduct in the workplace.
Photo: Eva Rinaldi, via Wikimedia Commons
We are living through a social revolution not seen since the 1960s.
The fragmentation of mass media, globalisation and the rise of social media has given the community a voice like never before.
The #MeToo movement epitomises that revolution, AFR BOSS 2018 True Leaders judge Elizabeth Proust says.
“As a campaign [#MeToo] is going to make a big difference, not just to current and past generations but to future generations of women, this is enduring,” Proust says.
Fellow judge Ming Long adds: “It is significant for both women and men.”
“For the first time women are being believed.”
“That’s the groundbreaking difference [of #MeToo].”
“It is saying that even if men have power and position, women are believed.”
“If men felt they could get away with [sexually harassing women], they no longer can.”
A tweet posted by the local face of the #MeToo movement, Tracey Spicer on 18 October last year asking people to “contact me privately to tell your stories” was pivotal in delivering the movement from the United States to Australia’s shores.
The tweet sparked more than 2,000 responses and lit a “tinderbox” that was ready to explode.
The former television presenter and media trainer has been named on the AFR BOSS 2018 True Leaders list.
“A lot of women who perhaps would not have called up a newsroom in the past with a story or even sent a letter connected predominantly on Facebook PM [private message] and Twitter DM [direct message] because they felt there was an intimate connection through social media and someone they felt they knew,” Spicer tells AFR BOSS magazine.
“We know that storytelling changes hearts and minds and that’s the basis of the #MeToo movement; people don’t often change their opinions until they know someone who has been a victim or a survivor of wrongdoing.”
The term #MeToo dates back to 2006.
It was coined by Tarana Burke, an African-American survivor of sexual assault who wanted to do something to help women and girls of colour who had also survived sexual violence.
The movement took on a life of its own last October when it was alleged that movie mogul Harvey Weinstein had sexually harassed women for decades.
It set off a worldwide reckoning over sexual misconduct in the workplace.
In Australia, investigative journalists from the ABC and Fairfax Media, including reporter Kate McClymont, picked up the stories sent to Spicer and published accusations against Don Burke.
“We all knew about Don Burke for 30-odd years and people had touched on doing that story, but it was seen as too difficult and there wasn’t a desire to do the story,” Spicer says.
Aside from politics and media, the business community has been hit hard with claims of sexual harassment, including at the big four accounting firms, as revealed by The Australian Financial Review’s Edmund Tadros.
Revelations of affairs among AFL executives and relationships between chief executives and their assistants, including Seven West Media’s Tim Worner and former QBE chief executive John Neal, have put organisations and their boards on notice.
“We have only seen the tip of the iceberg with the business sector,” Spicer says.
“These cases are about to roll through the courts in the coming months.”
“A lot of corporations are reviewing their policies, procedures and culture and, believe me, they have to because the stories that are going to come out will be shocking.”
But it has not been an easy ride.
The allegations require meticulous research by investigative journalists and there are defamation laws to contend with.
Actor Geoffrey Rush has sued The Daily Telegraph and journalist Jonathon Moran for defamation over articles alleging that he behaved inappropriately towards a colleague during a Sydney Theatre Company production of King Lear in 2015.
Actor Craig McLachlan is suing Fairfax Media, publisher of BOSS, over unproven allegations of misconduct, which he denies.
The initial wave of support for #MeToo was followed by a backlash and Twitter was filled with attacks calling campaigners such as Spicer “green-left-feminazi” and branding the campaign a “man-hating witch-hunt”, along with the ubiquitous #NotAllMen.
“The investigative journalism has happened a lot more slowly than I expected because we are restricted in Australia in terms of defamation laws and lack of First Amendment protections like they have in the US but what has changed really quickly is the culture,” Spicer says.
Campaign for inquiry
McClymont points to the difficulty in verifying allegations to the point where they can be published, adding: “Because of our defamation laws, it is incredibly difficult to publish names of men who have sexually harassed women, especially one on one.”
Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Kate Jenkins picked up the cause and began campaigning for an inquiry.
In June, Jenkins launched an inquiry into sexual harassment in the workplace, the first of its kind in the world.
After Time’s Up was founded by a group of Hollywood celebrities in the US in January to support and fund legal action against sexual assault and harassment in the workplace, local equivalent NOW Australia was born.
It is a coalition of unlikely bedfellows including Spicer, political movers and shakers, musicians, actors and celebrities.
They have raised $150,000 through a crowd-funding campaign to set up a hotline, finance legal action and offer advocacy and support.
The revelations about misconduct in the workplace have also sparked a wider debate about the line for office affairs.
Spicer argues that the line is clear and rejects moves such as Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull’s “bonk ban”.
Power imbalance
“I believe we are talking about two different things,” she says.
“I met my husband, a cameraman, at work.”
“We were pretty much on the same power level and in a consensual relationship and ended up marrying.”
“There is nothing wrong with that.”
“Where relationships in the workplace can become problematic is where there is a huge power imbalance and the perception there has been some kind of coercion or favouritism because of that sexual relationship.”
The worst result would be if women stopped being invited to networking drinks and conferences because “men don’t feel like they can trust themselves around women”.
“We should be able to socialise and there is nothing wrong with flirting, particularly when they are at the same level in the workplace,” Spicer says.
Part of the panacea is putting more women in leadership positions, she says, especially across the judiciary and police.
And stand by for the next stage of #MeToo.
“The focus now is on low-paid industries who have missed out on this movement so far,” Spicer says.
* Patrick Durkin is The Australian Financial Review’s Melbourne Bureau Chief and Boss Deputy Editor. He tweets at @patrickdurkin.
This article first appeared at www.afr.com.
