There is clearly a will in Westminster to change the culture of sexual harassment that was so horribly exposed in the autumn. Previously, there was little will and no clear way for victims to get help, despite widespread anecdotal evidence that there were quite a lot of victims out there. Today a cross-party working group of MPs, peers, staff, and trade unions published their report on how to ensure that victims don’t feel ignored any more, and that there is a proper, independent process for dealing with complaints.
But will the report really be a success? And how will we really know what a success looks like, when sexual harassment is, in reality, often much more complex than it first seems?
One aspect of this complexity is that social mores are changing. Some women have disagreed with the zero-tolerance approach taken by colleagues from younger generations to what they see as low-level sexism or even clumsy compliments.
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