Conclusion

So, #NowWhat?

From top-down to bottom-up to individual level solutions to legal reforms, everyone has a role to play in dismantling the structures and systems—cultural, institutional, individual—that enable sexual harassment to persist. Whether you’re an employer or an employee, a policymaker, an advocate, or a citizen, any meaningful solution will require multiple stakeholders at all levels of an organization or community to collaborate and learn from each other to prevent and end sexual harassment.

As we’ve shown in this toolkit, here are some top strategies:

• Create a culture of civility and respect. Openly discuss acceptable norms of behavior, make it safe to provide feedback, and hold each other accountable.
• Design clear and trauma-informed reporting and support structures. Make policies easy to understand, reporting easy to do, resources and support easy to get, and action and accountability transparent.
• Consider using a neutral third party or ombuds structure to manage sexual harassment claims and listen to, intervene, and advocate on behalf of workers.
• Revamp anti-sexual harassment training so that it is in-person and interactive and includes not only legal compliance, but civility and bystander interventions.
• Use the supply chain, consumer buying power, and social pressure to reward respectful, anti-harassing companies and climates.
• Extend legal protections to workers, like contract workers, farm workers, and domestic workers, and open access to resources, support, and legal recourse to all workers.
• Educate, educate, educate. Start early, in schools, talking about consent and appropriate behavior.
• Change the narrative around power and superstars. Frame leadership through the lens of responsibility and duty to others. Look at the whole picture—a high performer with abusive, toxic behavior is more costly than valuable to an organization.
• Promote more women and marginalized groups into core leadership positions. Changing gender ratios at the leadership level can change power and gender dynamics throughout an organization.
• Shift mindsets. Develop a better understanding of human behavior and practice perspective taking, your own, and others’.
• Take action. There’s always something you can do. Walk away. Express verbal or nonverbal disapproval. Disrupt, deflect, defuse. Offer support. Make a report. Confront an offender or talk to their supervisor. Draft a letter. Talk openly with coworkers about acceptable behavior. Think: Can I have an impact? Is it safe? What is the best strategy given the culture of the organization and my level of influence?