Launched in U.S., the #MeToo movement has led to a much-needed moment of reckoning with the perils of unchecked power. For the high-profile predators who are falling, the movement is a resounding cry of accountability: You can no longer abuse your power to hide your crimes.
But the reality is that predators like Harvey Weinstein don’t arise by accident. They flourish because of the cultures of silence that protect them. In this way, the enterprise conversation surrounding #MeToo isn’t limited to sexual harassment. It’s a bigger discussion about abuse of power. It’s this abuse that companies must examine and eliminate. And we need to speed things up — particularly in the U.S.
As a male CEO in tech, I stand firmly behind #MeToo and its potential to reshape power structures across industries, including my own. But as a native of Sweden, I’m troubled by the slow pace at which things are happening in the U.S. While the movement has momentum, meaningful change still seems distant.
It doesn’t have to be that way. In my own country, I’m seeing things move faster. Despite launching in the U.S., #MeToo has galvanized Sweden’s women’s movement more than any event in recent memory, inspiring women across almost all industries in Sweden to come forward with their experiences of harassment and assault in the workplace.
The success of #MeToo in Sweden comes down to the country’s greater sense of gender equality. Relative to the U.S., Sweden is a country where feminism is normalized across both sexes. To my mind, this collective feminist spirit has helped imbue Sweden’s #MeToo movement with an urgency and scale it hasn’t attained in the U.S., where outmoded gender norms still persist across different industries and sectors of society.
It’s about men, not women
In Sweden, the days of corporate cultures of silence are coming to a close. By comparison, the U.S. is far behind.
This lagging pace is due to a particular mindset problem. By and large, U.S. society doesn’t accept that sexual assault isn’t about women being harassed, but about men harassing women. This failure to frame the issue properly creates roadblocks to meaningful progress.
Case in point: Lately I’ve been having many conversations with women and men in the U.S. about the #MeToo movement and its implications. I’m surprised at how unwilling many are to recognize and call out abuses of power when it happens.
Let me share one example: I was recently having a conversation with a senior female executive in the U.S. with a leadership background in both finance and tech. Eventually, the conversation turned to #MeToo, and I asked her if she’d encountered sexism on her path to powerful positions in two male-dominated industries. Her answer surprised me: She said she hadn’t dealt with those issues because she was always mindful of how she dressed and comported herself.
I was shocked. To me, her point was completely irrelevant to the conversation we were having. I thought we were talking about men harassing women. Yet her answer made it clear she was also talking about implicitly blaming the victim. I countered that if I was having a professional meeting with her, it wouldn’t matter if she showed up in a bikini — that’s still no excuse for harassment. Sure, I might find the situation awkward and unprofessional, but it would remain my responsibility to behave. She didn't agree.
I cannot understand this stance. To me, sexual harassment is a discussion that begins and ends with male behavior. What women wear shouldn’t enter into the conversation. Yet in the U.S. it does: victim-blaming is entrenched in the culture. And until there’s a collective mindset shift, meaningful change will not be sustainable.
Leading the way to change
So how can we harness #MeToo to create real change in the U.S. workplace?
The solution begins by acknowledging that sexual harassment is not an HR problem — it’s a leadership problem. Most companies already have policies against sexual harassment, bullying, corruption or any other kind of power abuse.
To eliminate harassment from the workplace, corporate leaders must openly reject cultures of silence and replace them with cultures of transparency — corporate environments in which the behavior of leaders at every level are aligned towards company values and policies. In this way, proper behavior can become a fundamental company value practiced by all.
The tech industry is uniquely suited to lead this charge. To me, tech companies are primed to dismantle cultures of silence because of the way our businesses already function. Today’s most successful tech companies are notable for rejecting traditional hierarchies in favor of flatter internal structures. These companies have more evenly distributed power. Processes and culture is to a higher degree owned on a team level.
This structure makes sense from a business perspective: Tech is an “innovate or die” industry in which enterprises must rapidly evolve alongside ever-shifting consumer preferences. Successful tech companies don’t waste time vetting everything up the corporate ladder. Instead, they empower individual employees and teams with the autonomy and leadership to bring good ideas to fruition fast.
Tech companies have already succeeded in creating organizational cultures where behaviors leading to innovation are promoted. Now it's time to extend those cultures to also include how to treat each other with respect and without abuse of power.
In the same way that transparency, shared accountability and individual empowerment is the new normal of tech business, it should become normalized for non-sexist culture. By fostering “flat” and hyper-communicative internal cultures, companies can accomplish two things: First, they can establish core values to which everyone — regardless of rank — must adhere. And second, they can empower individuals — again, no matter their role — with the leadership and power to call out bad behavior as soon as it surfaces.
To be sure, this effort won’t succeed overnight, and it’s not without challenges. Much has been written about the toxic “bro” culture embedded in certain tech companies, and these companies must comprehensively address this issue through personnel and policy changes. But at the industry level, the tech sector is unique in having the tools to dissolve hierarchies and actively using those tools to change how work gets done. Now tech has the opportunity to apply these same tools to change how workers treat each other.
It goes without saying that this evolution will be good for women. But it will also be good for men. Because the truth is that men aren’t destined to become serial sexual harassers. They become harassers because of the corporate cultures of silence that enable and protect them.
When we eliminate these silence-based cultures and replace them with cultures of transparency and alignment, we can prevent people from becoming predators by quickly identifying and correcting behavior that is not aligned with a company’s cultural values.
Patric Palm is CEO and co-founder of Favro.
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