From Nobel prize to Uber: How sexual harassment has cost us

Raise your hand if your boss, client or government official has ever embraced you at the start of a meeting and perhaps held on a tad longer and squeezed a little more tightly than necessary to convey a purely platonic greeting.

A variant of this behaviour is “si you come to my office we discuss”, usually after 5pm with closed doors.

My guess is 99 per cent of folks with their hands up are women.

Men might say, "Eh! Pole sana, it’s tough being a woman" — all the while secretly thinking, “I am glad I don’t have to deal with those issues”. Here’s why it matters.

This year, for the first time since 1949, the Nobel Prize for Literature will not be awarded due to lack of quorum on the selection committee to decide on a finalist.

SEXUAL HARASSMENT

The reason is a ranking member of the aforementioned body, Jean-Claude Arnault, has been caught with his pants down. He is accused of sexual harassment by 18 different women over 20 years.

Strike one. A world with less culture. The Uber company, purveyor of transport to upmarket Nairobians, has recently paid out $1.9 million (Sh190 million) to settle sexual harassment claims in a lawsuit brought by 56 former and current employees of their US headquarters.

More than 20 executives have had to resign, including their former CEO and most recently Cameron Poetschzer, their top dealmaker.

Strike two. A world with a weaker Uber.

So, what if you applied the zero-tolerance scrutiny that is gaining momentum in the rest of the world to Kenya?

ADMIRATION

One constituency might opine that telling a female colleague aka Mrembo how good she looks and/or maybe she should become your baby-mama is just an African fellow’s way of complimenting a woman. After all, what is a man supposed to do — fill out forms in triplicate cosigned by the desired target, to confirm that she agrees to accept his admiration?

And it’s not a crime. Or is it? (Bill Cosby might have a different viewpoint from the depths of his jail cell.)

Every African woman has dealt with that potent mix of R & R (revulsion and repulsion) as they delicately extricate themselves from a situation with an Oga Pata Pata (Big Boss in Nigerian-speak).

POWERFUL INDIVIDUAL

On the outside, our grin becomes a grimace and we unconsciously lean back as the perpetrator moves closer. Inside our heads we are simultaneously processing the cost-benefit analysis of whether contracts will be renewed, promotions delayed, or reputations destroyed if we don’t pander to this all-powerful individual.

We have entered flight or fight mode. As females, we have had to develop a high-tech Mossad-inspired early warning radar just to go about our daily lives.

We are constantly assessing, for example, the tone of the taxi driver’s voice, as we haggle over his lack of map-reading skills.

Is he raising his voice and starting to turn back his body to offer glaring looks? We look around to see where exactly we are and if there are other people around as we surreptitiously lower the window, unlock the door and reach for our phone.

DISSENTING WAYS

And the fear is the same whether you are Mama Mboga or Dr So-and-So.

There are other aspects too. There is evidence that women are recruited onto boards to offer a different point-of-view, thus shielding the organisation from the ‘herd’ mentality in taking bad decisions.

Many a time though, it is seen as a checkbox on diversity with the unwritten job description to look pretty, stay mum and definitely not express dissenting views.

Should the latter happen, then she can be quelled by the sidebar “wink, wink” suggestions that Lawino only managed to get on the board because of the soft spot the (male) chair has for her.

IMMORAL

Surprisingly, the solution at a corporate level is not training. Maya Rhodan in Time magazine says, “Men who received training were less likely to notice and report sexual harassment”. The current best practice is bystander intervention which basically means if you see something, say something.

In defence of men, though, Brett Kavanaugh’s US Supreme Court nomination battle begs the question — do fathers and sons have the birds-and-bees-talk part two, to explain that egging on a lady to have one more drink so that she can be more “compliant” to your overtures is as immoral as encouraging your pal to wash their face at the edge of a crocodile infested river?

So strike three and the biggest one of all is that we stifle the voices of 50 per cent of the population: the same women who could be more industrious workers for our businesses or happier, better spending patrons.

Sexual harassment is costly to business, society and you.

The author is the managing partner of C. Suite Africa, a boutique management consultancy. [email protected]