Editor’s note: This article was updated on April 2 with new information on the number of donors and cases that Time’s Up has handled. The opening paragraphs have also been amended from the original publication of this story, which was just before the annual Academy Award ceremony.
The women receiving financial support for sexual-harassment cases from the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund are probably thankful for the Hollywood celebrities who have donated more than half the money in the fund.
But the beneficiaries also owe some gratitude to Alianza Nacional de Campesinas, a nonprofit that advocates for female farmworkers.
The #MeToo movement that spread virally in October in the wake of allegations of sexual assault by producer Harvey Weinstein and other prominent men prompted a group of Hollywood women — including actresses, directors, and entertainment lawyers — to begin meeting to discuss next steps. Those discussions were largely focused on the entertainment industry until Alianza published an open letter in November pledging solidarity with the women of Hollywood.
“Given our experience and knowing the depth of the problem — some of us are survivors ourselves — we were moved to speak out,” says Mónica Ramírez, cofounder and president of Alianza and the author of the letter to the Hollywood women. “We understood how difficult it would be for them going forward.”
That letter prompted the Hollywood insiders to begin exploring how they could have a broader impact on all working women. Tina Tchen, a lawyer who served as chief of staff for first lady Michelle Obama, helped connect the Hollywood women to the National Women’s Law Center, which had already established a legal network for a broader range of gender-discrimination cases.
The fund was unveiled in January and had raised $21.3 million as of late March. The large initial donations from Hollywood celebrities have spurred many smaller gifts. Nearly 20,500 donors from all 50 states and 80 countries have contributed. What’s more, at least 500 lawyers have agreed to collaborate with the fund, with many working pro bono or for minimal fees. The fund will also provide public-relations help to women battling prominent men or corporations in high-profile cases.
Cooks and First Responders
The outpouring of interest is lifting hope that what began as a spotlight on abuses in Hollywood will ultimately lead to greater justice for the low-income workers who may be the most at risk of sexual harassment and are the least likely to report it.
Requests for assistance have come from workers in more than 100 fields, including farmworkers, cooks, hair stylists, and first responders. The fund is open to men, but 96 percent of the requests to date have come from women, the law center says.
“Every field you can think of — people are finding us and reaching out,” says Fatima Goss Graves, president of the National Women’s Law Center. “There is no question that having the platform of women in Hollywood talking about these issues is extremely helpful in getting the word out and letting people know about their rights.”
Standing on Its Own
The Time’s Up organization is now establishing its own nonprofit, with goals that include new legislation related to sexual harassment and gender parity in Hollywood studios, but the group’s most ambitious project to date remains the legal-defense fund announced at its January 1 inception.
Actresses Jennifer Aniston, Sandra Bullock, Meryl Streep, and Reese Witherspoon and producer Shonda Rhimes each donated $500,000 to the fund. The director Steven Spielberg and his wife, Kate Capshaw, donated $2 million through their Wunderkinder Foundation. Katie McGrath and her husband, the director J.J. Abrams, donated $1 million. A handful of talent agencies gave $1 million or more.
“If you’re a woman, you know firsthand how prevalent this issue of safety and equity in the workplace is,” says McGrath, who runs a film-production company with Abrams and was involved in the discussions that led to Time’s Up.
“For J.J. and myself, this was a way of demonstrating our support for the women and men who don’t have access to help in the way that a lot of the more visible industries do.”
Problems Facing Farmworkers
In the farmworkers industry, where the majority of working women are Latina, sexual harassment has long been a problem, says Ms. Ramírez, Alianza’s president. Crew leaders, company owners, third-party vendors, and field workers have committed acts ranging from unwanted touching, groping, and exhibitionism to attempted sexual assault and rape.
Many women don’t report the behavior, Ramírez says. Some don’t understand the law and their own rights. Many of the workers are undocumented and fear deportation. With the median income for farmworker women at just $11,000 a year, some women fear that reporting will cost them their jobs and their ability to feed their children, Ramírez says.
She is now working with the National Women’s Law Center to publicize the legal fund to Alianza’s members and also to help the lawyers understand how the farmworker industry functions.
“The whole Time’s Up movement has turned something that is extremely difficult to discuss and was once considered taboo into something that is very public,” Ramirez says. “Women who may not have known that they had rights are now hearing that women in all industries have rights and that there are people who are trying to help them.”
The Power of the Golden Globes
The star power of the fund’s donors is driving media coverage that, in turn, helps the fund connect with women who have been victimized.
Gloria (not her real name) was watching the Golden Globes on television in January, just days after she’d been fired as the head cook at a Philadelphia hotel. She saw actresses wearing black dresses and Time’s Up pins and heard Oprah Winfrey’s message that there was hope. She went to the legal-defense fund’s site and provided her contact information.
Gloria’s job had been to prepare the hotel’s free breakfast for guests. But the job became unbearable, she says, when a new chief engineer began to stop by — leering at her, asking her out, bringing her gifts, inviting her on a weekend to New York, offering her cash.
Gloria, who is married, rebuffed his advances, but the behavior didn’t stop. She finally complained to her supervisor last October, but the supervisor suggested Gloria’s “insecurity” was causing the problem, she says. Three months later, she was fired.
A few days after sharing her story with the legal-defense fund, Gloria received an email with the names of three local lawyers who would be willing to provide a free initial consultation. “I was so shocked this was actually real,” says Gloria, who is now working part-time as a home-care nursing assistant.
Days later, she met with Robert Vance, a lawyer who has regularly handled sexual-harassment and sex-discrimination cases in his 35-year career. Vance filed a complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in March — a first step toward a potential lawsuit.
“The company failed to do two basic things: separate the accuser from the alleged perpetrator and conduct a thorough investigation of the complaints in a timely manner,” Vance says. “It was easier for the supervisor to fire our client than to deal with the situation that she had been presented with.”
He plans to ask the legal-defense fund for assistance with his expenses.
Many legitimate sexual-harassment claims are never filed simply because the cases don’t make economic sense for the lawyer advising the victim. Women who have lost employment or cut back their hours in response to harassment may have trouble paying legal expenses.
If the victim still works for the same employer, claims for out-of-pocket damages might be minimal, says Emily Martin, vice president for education and workplace justice at the women’s law center. Under federal law, the most a victim can receive for compensatory damages, including emotional harm, in a case against a company with fewer than 50 employees is $50,000.
A Lawyer Volunteers
Natalie Teravainen, a lawyer in Seattle who just opened her own firm focusing on sexual-harassment and sex-discrimination cases, is representing a supermarket employee who has accused a vendor of sexual harassment.
The victim, who asked that her name not be used, says two supervisors and a human-resources officer failed to intervene and then began to harass her verbally when she reported the vendor. She was ultimately forced to cut back her hours and switch to overnight work to avoid encountering the managers. After hearing about the defense fund on NPR, the woman contacted the organization and was connected to Teravainen.
A survivor of sexual violence herself, Teravainen says she’s committed to helping the employee “regardless of any financial outcome” but that potential support from the legal-defense fund will help. “A case like this could be in litigation for years,” she says. “You’re taking on huge corporations with huge law firms and a lot of resources. It’s a big risk and a big investment. The fact that this opportunity is out there to help both of us navigate the process and offset the burden of onerous financial commitments is really amazing. We’re both excited about this possibility.”
Legal Fees Recycled?
The fund, meanwhile, hopes that some large corporate firms will take on cases pro bono and that smaller firms like Teravainen’s will work for reduced fees. The fund outlined the process for lawyers to apply for and receive financial support in March.
The Washington offices of two national firms — Buckley Sandler and Skadden — have already sent volunteer lawyers, paralegals, and legal assistants to the National Women’s Law Center to help deal with the flood of requests for aid.
Martin says the fund will give priority to some cases over others. Cases that may be most likely to receive support include those brought by low-income women, those that deal with a systemic problem in the workplace, those that may set a precedent that will help others, and those that are brought against powerful men who have retaliated against the person lodging the complaint. The fund will also ask lawyers who win suits or reach settlements to recycle Time’s Up support back into the legal-defense fund.
The fund recently hired a full-time program coordinator, and additional hires are expected in the next few weeks, Martin says.
“We fully expect that over the next several months we will potentially tweak our criteria and processes as we learn more about what the need is and how the fund can be most useful,” she says.
Longer term, the fund’s viability will depend on whether it can continue to attract donations even when the current intense focus on workplace sexual harassment fades.
McGrath says that she and Abrams will continue to support the fund, even as it works to build a base of support outside of Hollywood.
“The dream would be that we don’t need a fund because there’s equity and safety,” McGrath says. “Until that’s the case, we want to do our part."n
