National Guides
SUPPORTING SURVIVORS OF GENDER BASED VIOLENCE
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As the Me Too movement has made clear, workplace harassment, including sex harassment and sexual assault, is widespread at every level of employment and in every kind of workplace setting and industry. Low-paid workers, workers in male-dominated fields, workers with limited (or no) bargaining power, and workers holding marginalized identities—Black women and other women of color; LGBTQI+ people; migrant and immigrant women; and disabled women—are at the greatest risk of harassment.
And harassment doesn’t just happen in the workplace, and it doesn’t just affect adults. Patients experience harassment at the hands of health care providers. And too many students experience harassment in elementary and secondary schools and in college—on campus, off campus, and online.
In each of these contexts, sex harassment threatens the safety and health of women and girls and limits their economic opportunities. Sex harassment can hurt girls’ ability to succeed at school and lead women and girls to avoid or leave a field of study, profession, or industry altogether—which perpetuates the gender wage gap. Women and girls of color, LGBTQI+ people, and disabled women and girls are more likely to experience sex harassment, and yet too often are not provided adequate support from schools or employers because of discriminatory stereotypes. And sex harassment by health care providers damages the patient-provider relationship, can create long-lasting trauma and mental health harms, and can prevent women, girls, and LGBTQI+ people from seeking care in the future.
This election and beyond, women and girls deserve to be represented by lawmakers who will fight for policies that allow them to live, learn, and work safely and with dignity.
Support the Bringing an End to Harassment by Enhancing Accountability and Rejecting Discrimination (BE HEARD) in the Workplace Act, which offers concrete, multi-faceted solutions to address and prevent all forms of harassment and discrimination in the workplace. It would also ensure that tipped workers are entitled to the same minimum wage as everybody else, rather than the current cash minimum wage of $2.13 an hour, ensuring women, who are two-thirds of the tipped workforce, are not forced to endure sexual harassment from customers as the price of making an adequate living.
Support the Students’ Access to Freedom & Educational Rights (SAFER) Act, which addresses gaps in Title IX and other federal civil rights laws prohibiting sex-, race-, and disability-based harassment and discrimination.
Fight the coordinated campaign of book bans and censorship, which targets content about LGBTQIA+ identities, gender, and sexuality; race, racism, and the history of segregation and colonization; and reproductive rights and sexual health, and which silences survivors from sharing their stories with others who may be going through the same thing.
Oppose any efforts to roll back Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act, which prohibits discrimination, including sexual harassment and assault, in health care settings.
Can you commit to supporting policies that strengthen and expand protections against harassment for workers, students, and patients– whether based on sex (including sexual orientation, gender identity, sex stereotype, sex characteristics, and pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), race, color, national origin, religion, age, or disability – and that provide supportive services for survivors?
Will you support ending the subminimum wage for tipped workers and entitle them to the same minimum wage as everybody else, so that tipped workers do not have to endure sex harassment from customers as the price of making an adequate living?
Will you elevate the voices of survivors, especially those holding marginalized identities, and fight against efforts to censor and silence their voices in schools and elsewhere?
If you’re experiencing gender-based violence and need support, call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 800.656.HOPE (4673) or connect via online chat here to talk to a trained RAINN support specialist.
If you need legal help with a situation involving sex discrimination in your workplace, at school, or in seeking health care, NWLC’s Legal Network for Gender Equity can help. You can request legal help by completing the brief request form on the NWLC website here.