Avoid Women at All Cost, Wall Street's New Mantra for #MeToo Era
#MeToo is hardly a single industry phenomenon now, as men across the country check their behavior at work. In Wall Street, where women are scarce in the upper positions, the influence of the movement has reached.
No more coffee or dinner with female colleagues. No sitting next to them in office or on flights. Booking hotel rooms on different floors while on tours. Avoid one-on-one meetings with women colleagues and hiring a woman these days is like inviting an unknown risk. These are some of the questions that are doing the rounds across Wall Street, where men are adopting these controversial strategies in the #MeToo era and in the process, making life more harder for the women.
In a recent study where interviews with more than 30 senior executives in Wall Street, the commercial hub of the United States suggest many are spooked by #MeToo and struggling to cope with it. “It's creating a sense of walking on eggshells,” says David Bahnsen, former managing director and independent adviser at the $1.5 billion Morgan Stanley.
#MeToo is hardly a single industry phenomenon now, as men across the country check their behavior at work, to protect them in the face of what they consider unreasonable or to simply do the right thing. Now in Wall Street, where women are scarce in the upper positions, the influence of the movement has reached. The finance industry that has also long nurtured a culture that keeps harassment complaints out of the courts and public eye and has so far avoided a mega-scandal like the one that has also has engulfed Harvey Weinstein.
Now, more than a year into the #MeToo movement across the world, with devastating revelations of harassment and abuse in Hollywood, Silicon Valley and beyond, now Wall Street is becoming more of a boy’s club. President of the Financial Women’s Association and a senior vice president at Wells Fargo & Co, Karen Elinski, says, “Women are grasping for ideas on how to deal with it, because it is affecting our careers. It is a real loss”.
There is a danger for companies too, that have failed to squash the isolating backlash and don’t take steps to have women as top managers, who are open about the issue and make it safe for everyone to discuss it, said Stephen Zweig, who is an employment attorney with Ford Harrison.
Stephen Zweig says, “If men avoid working or traveling with women alone, or stop mentoring women for fear of being accused of sexual harassment, those men are going to back out of a sexual harassment complaint and right into a sex discrimination complaint”.
On the Wall Street as elsewhere, reactions to #MeToo is fearful, “Some men have voiced concerns to me that a false accusation is what they fear. These men fear what they cannot control,” says Zweig.
Now we as a society, have reached a situation, where things are alarming and causing trouble as #MeToo movement has both positive and negative implications. So it is now for both men and women to find out ways to settle this issue, which is equally important to address as well as dangerous when it comes to professional work culture.