Anita Hill's Legacy

By Jill Smolowe

A YEAR AGO, AS AMERICANS watched the confrontation between Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas, pundits offered two visions of the future. One camp, using words like crusading, empowering and galvanizing, hailed the sexual-harassment hearings as a nationwide consciousness-raising session. They predicted that Hill's brave performance would both embolden other women to come forward with grievances and promote greater sensitivity in the workplace. The other camp warned that the spectacle of 14 white male Senators grilling a young black woman with sometimes rude, often embarrassing, rarely knowledgeable questions would deter other women from lodging harassment complaints. Pointing to polls that showed that almost twice as many people believed Thomas as Hill, some warned that women would draw a discouraging conclusion: no matter how insulting the behavior, they would find it hard to get a fair hearing.

A year later, it seems both sides were right. As the optimists foresaw, sensitivity to sexual harassment has deepened. Labor lawyers, corporate personnel managers and academics report more interest in the subject; the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) logged a record 9,920 harassment complaints in the past year, a rise of 50% over the previous year. But victims have learned how difficult it can be to get their cases resolved. Surveys find that while between 40% and 65% of female workers claim to have experienced sexual harassment on the job, less than 5% file complaints.

In a curious measure of the shifting sympathies, recent surveys show that today more people believe Hill. According to a Wall Street Journal/nbc News poll, 44% of registered voters now say Hill was telling the truth, up from 24% a year ago, while support for Thomas' version of events has dropped from 40% to 34%.

Victims of harassment do indeed seem more willing to take action. Some may have been encouraged by changes in the laws that resulted, ironically, from President Bush's surprising reversal on the Civil Rights Act of 1991. Just one week before Hill's appearance in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Bush decried the measure as a "quota bill." Shortly after the hearings, Bush made a quick peace with the legislation. As a result, harassment victims, formerly able to claim only back pay and reinstatement, can now seek federal damages awards, both compensatory and punitive, of up to $300,000.

Labor lawyers who handle such cases reported a surge in inquiries. Manhattan attorney Judith Vladeck vividly recalls giving a speech about sexual harassment to an American Bar Association group in 1980. "It was as if I were talking about something in Sanskrit," she says. "And these were employment lawyers." She now gets three times as many calls from women with complaints as she did before the Senate showdown.

The proliferation of books, television programs, academic courses and corporate training seminars has also served to raise awareness. "Everyone talks the talk these days," says Lynn Povich, editor in chief of Working Woman. "It's politically correct." When the Pentagon rebuked Navy investigators for failing to take seriously the charges of women molested during the Tailhook convention, it reinforced the notion that men who still "don't get it" proceed at their peril. "The Navy cover-up didn't work," says Professor Mary Coombs of the University of Miami School of Law. "The old idea that women who claim harassment are lying or making a mountain out of a molehill doesn't fly anymore."

If the good news is that sexual harassment is finally a problem with a recognizable name, the bad news is that many women are still stymied in their efforts to stop workplace offenses. Blatant quid pro quo cases, where promotions and raises are directly linked to sexual favors, are the easiest to litigate, but they are a relative rarity. As men and women both learned in the endless press coverage and office memos that followed the hearings, the most common form of harassment falls under the "hostile environment" umbrella, and may involve anything from lewd jokes to unwelcome physical contact. Many bosses still consider such complaints insignificant, and company procedures and policies often remain vague. As a result, most women continue to fear that if they cry harassment, they will be ignored, stigmatized, even fired.

Those who work up the courage to bring a grievance to the EEOC often meet with disappointment. Between October 1990 and September 1991, the EEOC received 6,883 complaints but filed only 66 sexual-harassment cases. Fully 60% of all EEOC complainants were advised that they had "no cause" to proceed -- more than twice the percentage of cases turned away during the Carter years -- and had to wait on average nine months to receive the discouraging news. With the EEOC budget in decline -- it has fallen 15% since 1980 -- the case load is unlikely to increase.

Even women who are willing and financially able to press their case with a private lawyer may find hidden costs. In 1987, Regina Rhodes filed charges against the owners of the Apollo Theater in Harlem after they refused to take seriously her complaints of unwelcome overtures from a co-worker and eventually fired her. In March she won an $85,000 judgment, but the case is still not over. The theater owners' appeal now proceeds through the New York court system. And the litigation has hurt her professionally. "I had to change the kind of work I was doing. No one wanted to deal with someone who had crossed the Apollo Theater."

And Rhodes' case is considered a success. More often, women seek in-house channels to make their discomfort known. "The vast majority of women try to report sexual harassment informally within their company," says Helen Neuborne, executive director of the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund. "It's the companies' failure to respond that leads to lawsuits."

Angela Johal's case is typical. She says that when her supervisor at the Canteen Corp. in San Jose, California, grabbed her breasts in April 1991, she complained to company officials. Johal was assigned a new supervisor, but her old boss was not reprimanded. The new supervisor accused her of incompetence, a charge that Johal attributes to the friendship between her new and former bosses. Johal became so depressed that she sought therapy and was put on antidepressants. Finally, she went on disability leave and hired a lawyer. Last February the attorney filed a complaint with the EEOC and initiated a civil suit. "The human resources department," Johal charges, "did nothing to help me." She recalls finding Hill's testimony so painful that she turned off the TV after half an hour.

Others watched every minute and found their thinking altered as a result. In Chicago, Nancy Reif settled her suit against Healthco International just one month before the hearings. Today, as she remembers the colleagues who commented on the size of her nipples and made lewd gestures, she regrets her decision. "Anita Hill would have given me the confidence to take this all the way to court," she says. Other plaintiffs have found that the hearings helped give them credibility. Former steelworker Cindy Chrisulis says that before the hearings, her charges of verbal abuse against a co-worker in Loraine, Ohio, were dismissed by both her company and her union as "his word against mine." Since the hearings, several people have backed up her story. "I am Anita Hill," she says. "Different circumstances, but the same hopelessness, the same isolation."

Nonetheless, many men seem more aware of what constitutes a "hostile environment" in the workplace. "Before Anita Hill testified, I thought sexual harassment was if you touched someone," says Scott Leeds, 24, a C.P.A. in Manhattan. "Now I find myself watching what I say around women." Manhattan financial consultant Peter Cullum is dismissive. "The Anita Hill thing was a political battle," he says. "I don't see it as a transcendent event." Philip Corboy Jr., a Chicago lawyer, apparently did. "I listened to the hearings, listened to the women around me," he says. "The amazing thing to hear is that they all felt like second-class citizens in the workplace." As a direct result, Corboy says, he is more careful about whom he touches and what he says. Surely even the most cynical can agree that that is progress of some sort.

With reporting by Julie R. Grace/Chicago, Julie Johnson/Washington and Andrea Sachs/New York