Activists, media-makers and celebrities including Lupita Nyong’o and Julianne Moore convened at the Tribeca film festival on Saturday, to discuss the work of Time’s Up, the group formed to counter systemic sexual harassment in the entertainment business and US workplaces.
“I am still trying to catch my breath that this moment is here and that is what we’re talking about,” said the actor Mariska Hargitay.
In a series of panels, moderators pushed their guests to suggest things anyone watching could immediately do.
Amani Al-Khatahtbeh, founder of MuslimGirl.com, encouraged people to share articles on social media that tell the story of marginalized people. Nina Shaw, founding partner at the law firm Del Shaw Moonves Tanaka Finkelstein and Lezcano, said women should push men to call out sexist behavior in other men. Jetmire Gjini, a hotel room attendant in New York, advocated for workplace unions.
“When women are part of a strong union like men,” Gjini said, “they have the power to stand up and protect themselves without fear of retaliation”.
Time’s Up announced its own new initiative, +1/3x, which encourages women to help other women at their workplace.
Desiree Gruber, chief executive of the multi-media company Full Picture and executive producer of Project Runway, explained that “+1” stood for bringing another woman to any work meeting or event and “3x” stood for at least three other meaningful connections that woman could be helped to make.
“Even if you are at the beginning of your career, there is something you could demystify for someone else in this office,” she said.
Time’s Up also celebrated its own success with a panel on its Legal Defense Fund, which provides resources to people fighting sexual harassment in the workplace. The fund is managed with the help of the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC) and has raised more than $21m.
Fatima Goss Graves, NWLC president and chief executive, said the fund had helped 2,500 people since 1 January, 67% of who identified as low-income.
Another trend the NWLC has spotted, she said, was that the men and women who approach it are often seeking legal help because they are being retaliated against with lawsuits or threatened legal action for reporting, or even just mentioning, sexual harassment.
“The retaliation people face is real,” Graves said.
As attorney Robbie Kaplan, of Kaplan & Company, explained, the fund was meant to create an army of lawyers that would fight to show such behavior would no longer be ignored. Kaplan, who argued before the US supreme court in favor of legalizing same-sex marriage, said the fund was filling a gap.
For decades, she said, people who were able to find attorneys to fight sexual harassment cases tended to be either high income or were “embarrassment cases”, making accusations against high-profile and powerful people.
“Almost everyone else in the middle were having a very, very hard time finding representation,” Kaplan said.
Time’s Up, she said, has heard from women in nearly every industry including food, construction and the military. Kaplan said the action she was seeing was reminiscent of the activism that helped make same-sex marriage legal.
“It’s just like gay rights,” Kaplan said. “How did we get them? One person said, ‘I am gay,’ and then another, and another and another. It’s exactly the same here.”
The only man on stage was a former NFL player, Wade Davis, who is gay. He works with corporations, sports teams and universities to improve the understanding of sexuality. To do this, he said, he has to educate men about feminist theory.
“The root of homophobia is sexism,” he said.
Asked what women in the audience could do to help promote feminism, Davis said it was men who needed to step up.
“Women don’t have to do anything,” he said. “They’ve done everything. Anything smart I said today I learned from a woman.”
