Having recently watched a cable television recreation of the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings, I am left thinking about how far some of us have come and how far some of us haven’t.
The confirmation hearings of Supreme Court Justice nominee Clarence Thomas in 1991 changed the concept of sexual harassment in the workplace by bringing the issue to the forefront. By the time, I started residency nearly 20 years after the Thomas hearings, I had thought that just about every workplace had learned the lesson. In my case, residency was a transition back to my home state. Going back home, at least to my new hospital, was like going back in time.
My tale today is not about being harassed. It is about the harassment of medical professionals around me. A married unit supervisor did proposition me for sex at one point during my residency, but I never considered it harassment because after I declined, that was the end of the discussion. This is what is supposed to happen when an unwanted proposition takes place. What I saw happening around me, however, was a different story.
As I became friends with many of the hospital employees, a similar story about a particular department manager emerged over and over again. He stared at the women, rubbed their shoulders at his will, regularly hired and promoted women who had specific traits, and was known to have had romantic relationships with people under his employ leading to unequal treatment in the workplace. The harassment was so blatant that I could not understand how a disgruntled worker hadn’t attempted a lawsuit following what appeared to be decades of inappropriate behavior.
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