SCOTLAND:crisis may prevent women from coming forward to report harassment
Salmond inquiry having 'chilling effect' on women, say experts
Campaigners believe Holyrood crisis may prevent women from coming forward to report harassment
Last modified on Sat 6 Mar 2021 04.36 GMT
The Salmond inquiry is having a significant impact on the momentum for change brought about by the #MeToo movement, according to experts and campaigners on workplace harassment.
They have told the Guardian the political crisis convulsing Holyrood has also had a “chilling” and “demoralising” effect on women in terms of their confidence in reporting unacceptable behaviour.
The handling of sexual harassment complaints made against Salmond by two female civil servants was found to be both unlawful and “tainted by apparent bias” following a judicial review brought by the former first minister in January 2019.
A year later he was acquitted of 13 charges of sexual assault at the high court in Edinburgh and since then he has claimed that senior officials close to the current first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, were involved in a “malicious plot” to destroy his reputation.
With two high-profile investigations ongoing into the Scottish government’s handling of the initial complaints and Sturgeon’s own conduct, concerns have been growing about the wider impact on women.
When Sturgeon gave her evidence to the Holyrood inquiry on Wednesday, she placed her government’s decision to create a new procedure to deal with sexual harassment firmly within the global context of #MeToo, the movement driven by shocking revelations about the US film producer Harvey Weinstein in autumn 2017.
In her opening remarks to the committee, Sturgeon said: “The spotlight shone on historic workplace harassment in late 2017 was long overdue.” And when she was later challenged on Salmond’s contention that the new policy had been expanded to apply to former ministers with Salmond in mind, she responded: “To see it in that way ignores what was happening globally at the time. It was about the #MeToo revelations.”
While the momentum that built from 2017 may have forced individual employers to review their policies, how those work in practice depends on the wider cultural context, said Kirsty Thomson, the director of Just Right Scotland, a charitable group of human rights lawyers.
“What is playing out at the moment with the Salmond inquiry is having a really significant impact. From what we hear, it is having a chilling effect,” said Thomson, who also leads the legal team at the Scottish Women’s Rights Centre, which offers free legal advice to women affected by violence and abuse.
“Any organisation can say ‘here is a harassment policy’, but someone has to feel confident to use it.”
Roz Foyer, the general secretary of the STUC, expressed similar concerns. She said: “My biggest fear is that the way we are discussing this inquiry is not encouraging more women to come forward or stand up to inappropriate behaviour in the future.”
Referencing TUC research that found that more than half of women in the UK had experienced sexual harassment at work while four-fifths did not feel able to report it, she said she had heard in particular from younger women in recent days “about the fact that [the Salmond inquiry] is a very triggering experience for them”.
“As someone whose own activism comes from a formative experience of sexual harassment in the workplace [Foyer was harassed by a senior male manager when she was 17] I certainly can empathise. It’s a very demoralising experience to see the way that this whole matter has been responded to and dealt with by ultimately the people in power. There is a lot of party politicking going on but not a lot of constructive engagement around the fact that women experiencing harassment at work is something that’s endemic across society and has to stop.”
The momentum around #MeToo was felt as powerfully in Scotland as it was internationally, said Nicole Busby, professor in human rights, equality and justice at the University of Glasgow. “I saw it speaking to the young women I teach, and that growing recognition that sexual harassment can happen to anyone, it’s very much to do with power and that it is unacceptable. That was a shift from women of my generation who had tolerated it for years.”
Busby, who has a particular specialism in harassment tribunal work, said she “cannot stress enough” the importance of retrospective policies such as the policy that the Scottish government formulated in 2017. “Tribunals are usually quite flexible about timelines because they recognise that victims can be traumatised or it is too difficult to take action at the time because of the power dynamics involved.”
The public discussion around the inquiry had been unhelpful, said Emma Ritch, the head of Scotland’s feminist policy organisation Engender, accentuating confusion around the difference between criminal law and sexual harassment policy as well as bolstering myths about the likelihood of women making false allegations.
“There’s a widespread sense from women who talk to us that this has been exceptionally offputting and even re-traumatising to women who have been sexually harassed. One of the things women are most attuned to when making complaints is the prospect of losing control over the process. What has happened with the Salmond inquiry has magnified this: that you could find yourself at the centre of a national scandal, where people feel free to impugn your motives and everything you want to talk about becomes about party politics or the constitution.”
For Foyer, the formula for change remains both practical and cultural. She said: “We need robust independent procedures that women can have confidence in. That’s down to every employer to take responsibility for, but we can all do more. As trade unions, we have a role to ensure this issue is being addressed, politicians have a role in how they talk about cases like this and the prominence they give to the root causes, and the media have a role to play as well.”
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