Policy Implications of Sexual Harassment

I've been recommending The Weeds to a lot of people - it's a wonky U.S. government policy podcast by Ezra Klein and the folks at Vox. I'm reaching back in time a little because I particularly liked their discussion in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein story, which provided a few different lenses to think about sexual harassment and what we can do to correct it from a policy perspective:

- by analogy to products liability law (and class action lawsuits)
- by analogy to property law and theft
- burden of proof and the concept of affirmative consent.

This quote hit me hard:

"It became really clear to me that we were living in an equilibrium where the grey area was all against the women... We need to think about changing where the equilibrium is, changing, honestly, who is afraid..."

"We have created a world in which women really bear the brunt of keeping themselves safe and often can't keep themselves safe. And when they try to do anything about it, it's incredibly hard. It's incredibly hard because of the ways laws are constructed, incredibly hard because of the way power is constructed."

Kelly Swanson's Vox article summarizes the highlights, and has a link to the podcast episode: The Policy Implications of the Harvey Weinstein Scandal