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                                                                                SOCIETY, Page 56

Anita Hill's Legacy


A year after the Clarence Thomas hearings, women wonder if the
consciousness-raising made enough of a difference

By JILL SMOLOWE -- With reporting by Julie R. Grace/Chicago,
Julie Johnson/Washington and Andrea Sachs/New York


    A year ago, as Americans watched the confrontation
between Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas, pundits offered two
visions of the future. One camp, using words like crusading,
empowering and galvanizing, hailed the sexual-harassment
hearings as a nationwide consciousness-raising session. They
predicted that Hill's brave performance would both embolden
other women to come forward with grievances and promote greater
sensitivity in the workplace. The other camp warned that the
spectacle of 14 white male Senators grilling a young black woman
with sometimes rude, often embarrassing, rarely knowledgeable
questions would deter other women from lodging harassment
complaints. Pointing to polls that showed that almost twice as
many people believed Thomas as Hill, some warned that women
would draw a discouraging conclusion: no matter how insulting
the behavior, they would find it hard to get a fair hearing.

    A year later, it seems both sides were right. As the
optimists foresaw, sensitivity to sexual harassment has
deepened. Labor lawyers, corporate personnel managers and
academics report more interest in the subject; the Equal
Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) logged a record 9,920
harassment complaints in the past year, a rise of 50% over the
previous year. But victims have learned how difficult it can be
to get their cases resolved. Surveys find that while between 40%
and 65% of female workers claim to have experienced sexual
harassment on the job, less than 5% file complaints.

    In a curious measure of the shifting sympathies, recent
surveys show that today more people believe Hill. According to
a Wall Street Journal/nbc News poll, 44% of registered voters
now say Hill was telling the truth, up from 24% a year ago,
while support for Thomas' version of events has dropped from 40%
to 34%.

    Victims of harassment do indeed seem more willing to take
action. Some may have been encouraged by changes in the laws
that resulted, ironically, from President Bush's surprising
reversal on the Civil Rights Act of 1991. Just one week before
Hill's appearance in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee,
Bush decried the measure as a "quota bill." Shortly after the
hearings, Bush made a quick peace with the legislation. As a
result, harassment victims, formerly able to claim only back pay
and reinstatement, can now seek federal damages awards, both
compensatory and punitive, of up to $300,000.

    Labor lawyers who handle such cases reported a surge in
inquiries. Manhattan attorney Judith Vladeck vividly recalls
giving a speech about sexual harassment to an American Bar
Association group in 1980. "It was as if I were talking about
something in Sanskrit," she says. "And these were employment
lawyers." She now gets three times as many calls from women with
complaints as she did before the Senate showdown.

    The proliferation of books, television programs, academic
courses and corporate training seminars has also served to raise
awareness. "Everyone talks the talk these days," says Lynn
Povich, editor in chief of Working Woman. "It's politically
correct." When the Pentagon rebuked Navy investigators for
failing to take seriously the charges of women molested during
the Tailhook convention, it reinforced the notion that men who
still "don't get it" proceed at their peril. "The Navy cover-up
didn't work," says Professor Mary Coombs of the University of
Miami School of Law. "The old idea that women who claim
harassment are lying or making a mountain out of a molehill
doesn't fly anymore."

    If the good news is that sexual harassment is finally a
problem with a recognizable name, the bad news is that many
women are still stymied in their efforts to stop workplace
offenses. Blatant quid pro quo cases, where promotions and
raises are directly linked to sexual favors, are the easiest to
litigate, but they are a relative rarity. As men and women both
learned in the endless press coverage and office memos that
followed the hearings, the most common form of harassment falls
under the "hostile environment" umbrella, and may involve
anything from lewd jokes to unwelcome physical contact. Many
bosses still consider such complaints insignificant, and company
procedures and policies often remain vague. As a result, most
women continue to fear that if they cry harassment, they will
be ignored, stigmatized, even fired.

    Those who work up the courage to bring a grievance to the
EEOC often meet with disappointment. Between October 1990 and
September 1991, the EEOC received 6,883 complaints but filed
only 66 sexual-harassment cases. Fully 60% of all EEOC
complainants were advised that they had "no cause" to proceed
-- more than twice the percentage of cases turned away during
the Carter years -- and had to wait on average nine months to
receive the discouraging news. With the EEOC budget in decline
-- it has fallen 15% since 1980 -- the case load is unlikely to
increase.

    Even women who are willing and financially able to press
their case with a private lawyer may find hidden costs. In 1987,
Regina Rhodes filed charges against the owners of the Apollo
Theater in Harlem after they refused to take seriously her
complaints of unwelcome overtures from a co-worker and
eventually fired her. In March she won an $85,000 judgment, but
the case is still not over. The theater owners' appeal now
proceeds through the New York court system. And the litigation
has hurt her professionally. "I had to change the kind of work
I was doing. No one wanted to deal with someone who had crossed
the Apollo Theater."

    And Rhodes' case is considered a success. More often,
women seek in-house channels to make their discomfort known.
"The vast majority of women try to report sexual harassment
informally within their company," says Helen Neuborne, executive
director of the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund. "It's the
companies' failure to respond that leads to lawsuits."

    Angela Johal's case is typical. She says that when her
supervisor at the Canteen Corp. in San Jose, California, grabbed
her breasts in April 1991, she complained to company officials.
Johal was assigned a new supervisor, but her old boss was not
reprimanded. The new supervisor accused her of incompetence, a
charge that Johal attributes to the friendship between her new
and former bosses. Johal became so depressed that she sought
therapy and was put on antidepressants. Finally, she went on
disability leave and hired a lawyer. Last February the attorney
filed a complaint with the EEOC and initiated a civil suit. "The
human resources department," Johal charges, "did nothing to help
me." She recalls finding Hill's testimony so painful that she
turned off the TV after half an hour.

    Others watched every minute and found their thinking
altered as a result. In Chicago, Nancy Reif settled her suit
against Healthco International just one month before the
hearings. Today, as she remembers the colleagues who commented
on the size of her nipples and made lewd gestures, she regrets
her decision. "Anita Hill would have given me the confidence to
take this all the way to court," she says. Other plaintiffs have
found that the hearings helped give them credibility. Former
steelworker Cindy Chrisulis says that before the hearings, her
charges of verbal abuse against a co-worker in Loraine, Ohio,
were dismissed by both her company and her union as "his word
against mine." Since the hearings, several people have backed
up her story. "I am Anita Hill," she says. "Different
circumstances, but the same hopelessness, the same isolation."

    Nonetheless, many men seem more aware of what constitutes
a "hostile environment" in the workplace. "Before Anita Hill
testified, I thought sexual harassment was if you touched
someone," says Scott Leeds, 24, a C.P.A. in Manhattan. "Now I
find myself watching what I say around women." Manhattan
financial consultant Peter Cullum is dismissive. "The Anita Hill
thing was a political battle," he says. "I don't see it as a
transcendent event." Philip Corboy Jr., a Chicago lawyer,
apparently did. "I listened to the hearings, listened to the
women around me," he says. "The amazing thing to hear is that
they all felt like second-class citizens in the workplace." As
a direct result, Corboy says, he is more careful about whom he
touches and what he says. Surely even the most cynical can agree
that that is progress of some sort.