Handbook of Sexuality Leadership

Inspiring Community Engagement, Social Empowerment, and Transformational Influence

James C. Wadley

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000762440
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Leadership in Education

This interdisciplinary book bridges the gap between sexuality and leadership studies and serves as a blueprint for professionals seeking to understand the rationale behind leadership styles, particularly those which facilitate conversations thateducate or liberate individuals, couples, families, and communities.

The Handbook of Sexuality Leadership brings together education, clinical, research, and advocacy experts from the field of sexology, who each speak of their unique leadership experiences – with diversity and inclusivity in mind – and serve as a medium of empowerment and transformational influence. This innovative compendium illuminates strategic planning, community engagement, and the necessity of working with underserved or marginalized communities using a combination of leadership styles. Chapters provide tools for risk taking, organizational improvement, collaborative leadership, and cultural intelligence, as well as strategies toemancipate underrepresented groups and lead systemic change.

With questions for further thought included to provoke critical thinking and initiate transformative conversations, this book will be an essential read for anyone interested in becoming a sexuality consultant or serving in a leadership position.

Section IV
Leadership in Sexuality Consultation and Special Issues

12 Money Talks … Misogynists Walk

A Complex Conversation on Sexual Harassment, Race, and Equal Pay

Leah Hollis

In 2018, the Philadelphia Pennsylvania community and the world witnessed the retrial of America’s Dad – Bill Cosby. His first trial, in 2016 for sexual assault, resulted in a mistrial, although over 60 women came forward accusing Cosby of sexual assault, stretching back into the 1960s (Roig-Franzia, 2018). However, in early 2018, the “#MeToo” movement was well under way; the jury swung against this entertainment icon with a guilty verdict. By the fall of 2018, the 81-year-old Cosby was sentenced to 3–10 years in prison without bail (Roig-Franzia, 2018). Many Americans grew up watching The Cosby Show. Youngsters in the 1970s relished Saturday morning memories of the Fat Albert cartoon. On a noteworthy historical note, he funded the March on Washington in 1963 with Martin Luther King, Jr. Cosby had a phenomenal footprint and yet, in his prominence, people knew of his exploits and said nothing. His predatory behavior with women was an open secret, yet only in the twilight of his life is he held accountable with the strength of the #Me Too Movement (Day, 2017).

This watershed moment of “#Me Too” is long overdue. The public is collectively witnessing what several have known for years about the frequent predatory experience that some women endure in any employment sector. Within this movement, some women find the one-two punch with a financial inequity in pay: The first punch is the harassment; the second punch is the financial inability to finance a legal battle. Through research on workplace bullying in higher education, this researcher receives several emails and calls from academics, mostly women, asking how to fight bullies and harassers. In the last semester, questions came from Arizona, Texas, New York, California, and Wisconsin. Eventually, someone considers “how” to fight. Strategies are contemplated; colleagues are gathered for support and advice. Government agencies such as state-level human rights organizations and federal equal opportunity institutions present some options, yet those investigations are protracted and cumbersome. Further, even for the Equal Opportunity Commission (United States), the Office of Civil Rights (United States), and the Equality and Human Rights Commission (United Kingdom), a potential complainant must present a proper and precise argument for intake personnel to engage the problem rather than dismiss the issue before it is even investigated. After contemplating these options, often a woman comes to terms with the fact that “I can’t afford an attorney.” The female violations in the #MeToo are classified as criminal, but often not fought because of a civil rights violation. What remains is unequal pay between males and females.

In the winter of 2017, the Chronicle of Higher Education published an article about a female mathematician at Haverford College (Singer, 2017). This faculty appointment was her first job. In her small department, she found that her research interests coincided with those of the department harasser, and everyone knew who he was. The newly appointed professor had learned of several other women who had silently suffered. She spoke up to complain about sexual harassment where others were not in the position to do such.

This story of the female mathematician documents a very real dynamic that occurs daily in higher education, but it also points to the historical problem about women needing the financial security to fight harassment. In discussing her story, the female mathematician also mentioned her safety net: She was married with financial support. She was not only brave but in a social and financial position for self-advocacy. In contrast, so many women are the breadwinners, single mothers, and/or the caregivers of elder parents. They cannot afford the right to speak up or risk unemployment.

The “#MeToo” movement is a fight against misogynist sexual harassment and has evolved in a fight to be inclusive of the range of discriminations against women. Holley (2017) notes that 80% of those seeking legal assistance to fight bias crimes cannot find or afford legal assistance. Further, women only make 80% of men. For Black women, the number is 63% of what men make, and for Latinx women the number is 54% of what men make (Bibler, 2015). Consequently, silence breakers often are not just brave, but also in a position with the resources to mount a legal fight. In higher education, those who speak up typically have the means or safety to speak out either because they have earned tenure or hold an administrative position that affords resources to engage in a viable complaint.

Money: Root of Evil Inequity?

The money issue is complex because money in many cultures signifies worth and value (Smith, 1937). For example, a luxury sedan costs more money than a simple hatchback because the perception is that the sedan is worth the expense. When an organization pays men more money than women for the same duties, the message is that men’s work is valued more than women’s work. Further, the disparity in pay means that women have fewer resources to even fight for their worth. Organizations compensate employees in the higher ranks of the organizational structure, confirming the worth of those employees, compared to the worth of those toiling in the entry and middle levels. These differences, which illustrate the organizational power, coincide with the economic power assigned to the higher echelon employees (Hauge, Skogstad, & Einarsen, 2009; Hutchinson, Vickers, Jackson, & Wilkes, 2010; Merton, 1968). In turn, the salary establishes a competitive benchmark, confirming organizational worth and recognition of achievement (Nnedum, Egwu, Obinna, Ntomchukwu, & Chukwukeluo, 2011).

When an organization loves money to the point of devaluing one gender for another, that love of money, instead of love for the ethical and legal compliance for equal pay, signals a propensity to engage in other unethical behavior (Singhapakdi, Vitell, Lee, Nisius, & Yu, 2013; Tang et al., 2012). In fact, Srivastava, Locke, and Bartol (2001) suggested that those who love money, instead of ethical management (Brown & Mitchell, 2010), use money to enhance their standing and to acquire and maintain power in order to overcome their intrinsic self-doubts. Such machinations regarding money emerge from their own insecurity and low self-esteem, while in contrast ethical and confident leaders would avoid illegal pay disparities.

For those who love money at the expense of others, they insert money as an artificial equalizer to soothe a potentially lower self-esteem by diminishing the value of others by paying them less. Further, money and power to have and possess things overrides humanity (Freire, 1970). The “haves” and their possessions remain dominant and in control as an oppressor. The oppressed are left disenfranchised and without proper resources to fight for their own humanity (Freire, 1970). Women are twice dehumanized as sexualized automatons, and second with diminished means to resist such objectification. In other words, often women are reduced to sexual objects while their inequitable financial situations often prohibit them from transcending these objectified spaces.

Funding the Fight

A British study considered the type of job as a major contributor to unequal pay. Part-time employment often is assigned to women who are mothers; these employees are often constrained in potential upward mobility or in the location given their considerations of child care (Booth, Francesconi, & Frank, 2003; Manning, 1996; Manning, 2003; Neuburger, 2010). A common finding was reported in a Canadian study, stating that women are more likely than men to step out of their careers or to accept lower-paying part-time positions. Such part-time contingent adjunct assignments underpay talented employees, and an employee typically accepts a series of part-time jobs to make a living (Hollis, 2015). The social expectation that the woman is the caregiver also restricts her career path and earning power. While women may not necessarily subscribe to this social prescription, the dominant culture constrains women’s self-determination when imposing such domestic expectation on them.

As reported by the American Council on Education (ACE), women comprise only 26% of higher education presidents (ACE Convenes Discussion on Women in Higher Education Leadership, July 16, 2012). Further, women only serve as 31% of the full professorships and only 38% of the chief academic officers; though, in the last decade, women have exceeded men in the number of doctorates (Johnston, 2016). Power for women in the academy, in the form of organizational power and financial power, is evasive. This contributes to the dynamics that women must consider in their fight against harassment.

In a meta-analysis of studies, Tippet and Wolke (2014) show that those from lower socioeconomic status are more likely to endure bullying. Hence, they are in an inferior position from which to fight. Bullying is an attempt to use social strategies to maintain acceptance, achievement, and access to resources (p. 56). In the higher education context, workplace bullying is also used to maintain the dominance of the powerful (Hollis, 2016). When women attempt to ascend the career ladder through promotion, tenure, supervision, or advanced degrees, they become a more likely target of workplace bullying (Hollis, 2016a). When women attempt to gain organization power, through these aforementioned avenues that also bring additional financial reward, women are often stifled, even harassed, and often remain confined to lower-paying positions. Those staff members with lower rank or less power are more likely to face bullying. Given their entry-level and middle management status, they are also more likely to earn less. Thus, the disenfranchised position for women often leaves women in a diminished position for protest.

Enlightenment and Equity?

University systems presumably hire, promote, and compensate employees and faculty based on merit. Managers and supervisors who evaluate individual performance are expected to do such with objectivity and within the bounds of clarified policies and procedures. In turn, gender bias should not be calculated into the equation, yet unfortunately, ubiquitous gender bias often compromises the compensation decisions. Logically, merit preferences should prevail in systems that espouse enlightened thought (Doucet, 2011).

Nonetheless, people execute these policies and procedures based upon their own experiences that are related to how they construct gender-based social prescriptions. Fallible people with myopic gender-based assumptions do not recognize their shortcomings and unintentionally perpetuate these gender-related biases. Sometimes, these biases and counternormative ideologies are woven into the application of policy/tenure and promotions are accolades initiated at the department level, which then progress to the college level. The academy harbors a host of idiosyncrasies and predilections that have an impact on the tenure and promotion cycle. Despite national or state policies to eradicate inequity, individual decisions within the organization cast the die for gender inequity in pay. “Inequality at work does not just happen; it occurs through the acts and the failures to act by people who run and work for organizations” (Reskin, 2000, p. 717).

Further, when a woman faces harassment and also struggles against an organization that quietly allows for this harassment, the woman endures the one-two punch of inequity. First, she has to fathom how to respond to sexual harassment without jeopardizing her career; and second, she then has to cultivate the necessary resources to advocate for her rights.

Noteworthy Examples

A federal investigation occurred at the University of California at Berkeley regarding its response to sexual assault. The Office of Civil Rights conducted a four-year review and determined that California-Berkeley was out of compliance in handling sexual assault complaints. While faculty rights remained at the center of the protracted investigation, the target was a female graduate student (Brown, 2018).

The saga of the University of Rochester sexual harassment case documents how four women over several years were sexually involved with a male faculty member. In this case, the male professor pursued female students and had several sexual exploits (Mangan, 2018). The issue came to the forefront when tenured faculty spoke out after years of the campus community knowing of this behavior.

A recent Guardian investigation documented how many UK universities are failing to address sexual misconduct: 132 universities reported a total of over 1,900 reports of sexual misconduct in the last seven years (Batty & Cherubini, 2018). Cambridge University had the most incidents with 215 reported cases; Durham University reported 88 cases in the same time frame. Some reports from UK universities are unclear about whether the assailants are students or staff.

In this last example, an article documented that sexual harassment at UK universities occurred in epidemic proportions. Professor Nicole Westmarland of Durham University stated: “Managers failed to recognize that the way the senior lecturer acted towards them as male managers were not necessarily the way that he interacted with those with less power, including students, early career academics, and some administrators” (Batty, 2017, para. 8).

These examples are just a few narratives of how higher education remains rife with inequities for women, inequities that continue to sprout from the power differentials between men and women. A typical theme in these cases is that the women had less power organizationally and financially. They contemplated the adverse effect on their careers if they complained. Comparatively, the men were typically in more powerful positions and had more money. The power differential is a mammoth component of harassment and is partly caused by a woman’s financial inability to formally combat the abuse.

Deciding to Fight

Money is not the only element informing a woman’s propensity to fight sexual harassment. The historical construct from which women emerge also informs their inclination to fight and consider if their plea for justice will be heard. These dynamics relate to the privileging of middle-class white women’s voices, while prejudicial stereotypes such as Mammy, Jezebel, Sapphire, and Strong Black Woman have rendered black women invisible or lacking credibility to defend their virtue (Harris-Perry, 2011).

The patriarchal culture, which often fails to recognize and appreciate women’s worth, can have a negative impact on women and their self-perception to engage in nontraditional tasks, such as resisting sexism. McMahan (1982) and Dickerson and Taylor (2000) pose the idea that internalized negative perceptions can stifle someone’s inclination to engage in a situation if that person lacks the confidence to proceed. Consequently, that person would avoid the task and settle with something he/she perceives as easier to accomplish (Bandura, 1977). Fighting against discrimination, against sexual harassment, or discriminatory gender-based pay inequity is far from easy. The complainant regardless of race would need a positive self-perception, strong self-esteem, and potentially strong intragroup support to resist sexist and racist normalcy (Spencer-Rodgers, Major, Forster, & Peng, 2016). In short, a woman has to strongly believe first that she is worth the fight. This concept alone can be difficult to cultivate given the subtle yet constant messages from the dominant culture about women being the weaker sex. From that decision, she needs to muster the time and resources to engage the fight; yet these subsequent elements only follow the initial decision regarding self-worth.

Historical Denial of Resources...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Biosketches
• Introduction
• Section I Leadership in Sexuality Education
• Section II Leadership in Sexuality Activism, Counseling/Therapy
• Section III Sexuality Leadership and Mentoring
• Section IV Leadership in Sexuality Consultation and Special Issues
• Appendix: Graduate and Postgraduate Programs in Human Sexuality
• Index