美国国家公共电台 NPR A Look At The Evolution Of Sexual Harassment Training Videos

A Look At The Evolution Of Sexual Harassment¹ Training Videos

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

Thirty-seven years ago, sexual harassment in the workplace became illegal. That led to the creation of the first harassment training videos. This one, called "Power Pinch," is narrated² by a man sitting in a bar.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "POWER PINCH")

KEN³ HOWARD: Good ol' sex - what's wrong with that, huh - everything, as a matter of fact, when it's unwelcome and when it occurs at work. And yet this thing called sexual harassment is taken about as seriously as a dirty joke.

SHAPIRO: Stacey Vanek Smith looked into the evolution of sexual harassment training videos for NPR's newest podcast The Indicator⁴ from Planet Money.

STACEY VANEK SMITH, BYLINE⁵: Liz Tippett is an employment lawyer. When she was starting her first job at a law firm in California, she sat through her very first harassment training. She did not love it.

LIZ TIPPETT: This is terrible.

VANEK SMITH: (Laughter).

TIPPETT: And I just thought, why are we doing this? Why is everybody offering this same thing that is just painful to sit through? Can't we do it better?

VANEK SMITH: Liz thought these videos are incredibly important, and the fact they're so bad is a serious problem. So when she joined the faculty⁷ at the University of Oregon Law School, she decided⁸ to study harassment training.

So how many videos did you watch in all?

TIPPETT: Seventy-four.

VANEK SMITH: Seventy-four.

TIPPETT: Seventy-four - it was purgatory⁹.

VANEK SMITH: The early videos are very basic. There is zero subtlety¹⁰.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED ACTRESS: (As character) Mr. Kendall (ph), I've told you before. I don't feel comfortable socializing with clients.

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) Don't worry about it, Ann (ph).

VANEK SMITH: In this video, a young receptionist is trying to tell her very shady older boss why she is not comfortable joining him and a client for drinks.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) You know, that deal that we just signed could pay your salary for the next couple of years. I could use a little cooperation here. Do I make myself clear?

UNIDENTIFIED ACTRESS: (As character) Mr. Kendall, I'm not trying to be difficult.

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) Now, I'll pick you up at about 6:30. Wear something nice.

VANEK SMITH: The guy is basically saying, show my client a good time, or you're fired. It is almost laughable. It's so obviously wrong. But that was the point of the old videos - to show people what sexual harassment was and to make the point that this is not OK. But that was decades ago. Times have changed. More women have entered the workforce¹¹. And Liz says harassment training evolved. Here's a recent video. We got it off of YouTube. It just two guys who work at a hospital, and they're looking at a female coworker's social media posts.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) Go to her photos. See there, that one...

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #3: (As character) Oh...

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) ...From when she was in school.

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #3: (As character) Oh, man, is that Samantha (ph)?

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) Yeah.

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #3: (As character) I've never seen her like that.

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) She must have been completely wasted.

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #3: (As character, laughter). Oh, man, I'll send a link to Doug (ph). The guys upstairs need to see this (laughter).

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) Oh, yeah.

VANEK SMITH: This is super creepy, but it is unclear to me if what they're doing is actually illegal. Even Liz says she can't quite tell. And this is what today's sexual harassment training is all about. Over the last 37 years, the focus has moved from, like, caveman-style quid pro⁶ quo to stuff this kind of borderline and shady, basically helping¹² people in the modern workplace understand the sometimes subtle line between what is creepy and what is illegal. And then the Harvey Weinstein news broke. There was nothing subtle about it. And for weeks now, women have been coming forward at company after company with stories of physical assault and quid pro quo.

TIPPETT: It just felt really familiar. I mean, it looked like the videos from, like, the 1980s, the 1990s.

VANEK SMITH: And Liz says that's when she realized that maybe those videos with all of their ridiculous music and the evil, leering men - maybe those videos got something right that the new, subtler videos were missing.

TIPPETT: Harassment is about power and the abuse of power. And that has really faded away from current trainings.

VANEK SMITH: Liz says the current videos reflect where we all thought we were as a society. We thought we'd mostly evolved beyond the sort of obvious forms of caveman-style sexual harassment. But Weinstein and everything that's come to light since shows us that in some fundamental ways, we are still in the cave. Liz says better workplace training could help, training that shows the root of harassment is this raw power game. But she says things won't really improve until there are just more women in positions of power.

Do you think that'll change now?

TIPPETT: I hope so.

VANEK SMITH: That was a long pause.

TIPPETT: (Laughter).

VANEK SMITH: Stacey Vanek Smith, NPR News.

SHAPIRO: And Stacey Vanek Smith is the host of NPR's newest podcast on the big ideas behind business news. It's called The Indicator from Planet Money.

1 harassment   

n.骚扰，扰乱，烦恼，烦乱

参考例句：

• She often got telephone harassment at night these days.这些天她经常在夜晚受到电话骚扰。
• The company prohibits any form of harassment.公司禁止任何形式的骚扰行为。

2 narrated   

v.故事( narrate的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• Some of the story was narrated in the film. 该电影叙述了这个故事的部分情节。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Defoe skilfully narrated the adventures of Robinson Crusoe on his desert island. 笛福生动地叙述了鲁滨逊·克鲁索在荒岛上的冒险故事。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

3 ken   

n.视野，知识领域

参考例句：

• Such things are beyond my ken.我可不懂这些事。
• Abstract words are beyond the ken of children.抽象的言辞超出小孩所理解的范围.

4 indicator   

n.指标；指示物，指示者；指示器

参考例句：

• Gold prices are often seen as an indicator of inflation.黃金价格常常被看作是通货膨胀的指标。
• His left-hand indicator is flashing.他左手边的转向灯正在闪亮。

5 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

6 pro   

n.赞成，赞成的意见，赞成者

参考例句：

• The two debating teams argued the question pro and con.辩论的两组从赞成与反对两方面辩这一问题。
• Are you pro or con nuclear disarmament?你是赞成还是反对核裁军？

7 faculty   

n.才能；学院，系；(学院或系的)全体教学人员

参考例句：

• He has a great faculty for learning foreign languages.他有学习外语的天赋。
• He has the faculty of saying the right thing at the right time.他有在恰当的时候说恰当的话的才智。

8 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

9 purgatory   

n.炼狱；苦难；adj.净化的，清洗的

参考例句：

• Every step of the last three miles was purgatory.最后3英里时每一步都像是受罪。
• Marriage,with peace,is this world's paradise;with strife,this world's purgatory.和谐的婚姻是尘世的乐园，不和谐的婚姻则是人生的炼狱。

10 subtlety   

n.微妙，敏锐，精巧；微妙之处，细微的区别

参考例句：

• He has shown enormous strength,great intelligence and great subtlety.他表现出充沛的精力、极大的智慧和高度的灵活性。
• The subtlety of his remarks was unnoticed by most of his audience.大多数听众都没有觉察到他讲话的微妙之处。

11 workforce   

n.劳动大军，劳动力

参考例句：

• A large part of the workforce is employed in agriculture.劳动人口中一大部分受雇于农业。
• A quarter of the local workforce is unemployed.本地劳动力中有四分之一失业。

12 helping   

n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的

参考例句：

• The poor children regularly pony up for a second helping of my hamburger. 那些可怜的孩子们总是要求我把我的汉堡包再给他们一份。
• By doing this, they may at times be helping to restore competition. 这样一来, 他在某些时候,有助于竞争的加强。