As an aside, I think the reason the US comes across as so suit-happy is because our system is set up to put a great deal of the burden of change on the judicial side, and not the legislative side. If you want change, as a citizen, you're going to get it through the courts more than you will through the legislature, honestly. Yes, this does mean it's our courts that get the brunt -- continuous appeals over, say, asking Congress to do something -- but that's also because in certain cases, the suit could wend its way all the way up to the Supreme Court. We tend to put a great deal more weight, socially, on decisions out of the Supreme Court than we do on legislative decisions, at least historically -- nearly all of our major social changes have originated from court decisions: desegregating schools, striking down miscegenation laws, legalizing contraceptives for married couples, legalizing abortion... and plenty of other big issues. Outside the past decade or so of certain conservative areas whining about "activist judges", our legal/social system has pretty much always looked to those same "activist judges" to protect the minority from the majority. Popular votes/referendums (like CA's gay-marriage issue) are assumed to swing with the majority over the minority, and the legislature is frequently seen as a top-down forced change (and therefore not good) -- so we fall back on the courts when, as a minority, our rights are being trompled. The result, it seems to me, is that we see "lawsuit" as the answer to everything, because it's the answer to so many of the important things.
What's ironic or sad about common Japanese workplace sexual harrassment is that it wasn't really that long ago in the US that the same comments would've been considered acceptable. Actually, it's really only been in the past fifteen years or so -- or less, honestly -- that I could expect finally not to have to hear such nonsense. Me, I think this has to do with the dot-com and technology booms, which needed such a huge influx of new (educated, trained, skilled) workers for the boom that it was pretty much a free-for-all: companies were hiring like crazy to meet demand, and the old "we'd rather take a man over a woman" (for various reasons) was pushed to the wayside: "we just freaking need people, get us people who know what to do"... and that helped open a lot of doors.
But yeah, sad as it is to say, I didn't really stop getting comments like the ones you mentioned -- or the even more teeth-gritting, "well, a major factor in promotion is how long someone will be with the company" (with the implication -- if not said outright -- being that as a woman, they expect you'll soon be leaving to have babies, so why bother investing training in you, or promoting you? Being asked at work by managers how soon you're planning to have a family is just infuriating -- because if you indicate that you don't plan to have a family, they either see you as suspect (not following the proper gameplan for young woman) or they don't believe you anyway, and discount you as a liar (to yourself or others). And I'm sure I could talk back to my bosses more than a Japanese woman, but I couldn't talk back that much. Most corporate environments, I find, tend to discourage employees from going off on their bosses about being misogynist, chauvinist asshats without even two braincells to rub together, and so on.
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Date: 5 Nov 2010 03:51 pm (UTC)What's ironic or sad about common Japanese workplace sexual harrassment is that it wasn't really that long ago in the US that the same comments would've been considered acceptable. Actually, it's really only been in the past fifteen years or so -- or less, honestly -- that I could expect finally not to have to hear such nonsense. Me, I think this has to do with the dot-com and technology booms, which needed such a huge influx of new (educated, trained, skilled) workers for the boom that it was pretty much a free-for-all: companies were hiring like crazy to meet demand, and the old "we'd rather take a man over a woman" (for various reasons) was pushed to the wayside: "we just freaking need people, get us people who know what to do"... and that helped open a lot of doors.
But yeah, sad as it is to say, I didn't really stop getting comments like the ones you mentioned -- or the even more teeth-gritting, "well, a major factor in promotion is how long someone will be with the company" (with the implication -- if not said outright -- being that as a woman, they expect you'll soon be leaving to have babies, so why bother investing training in you, or promoting you? Being asked at work by managers how soon you're planning to have a family is just infuriating -- because if you indicate that you don't plan to have a family, they either see you as suspect (not following the proper gameplan for young woman) or they don't believe you anyway, and discount you as a liar (to yourself or others). And I'm sure I could talk back to my bosses more than a Japanese woman, but I couldn't talk back that much. Most corporate environments, I find, tend to discourage employees from going off on their bosses about being misogynist, chauvinist asshats without even two braincells to rub together, and so on.