Lack of accountability helps misogyny to thrive in Australia’s elite institutions

It’s increasingly clear that business, and particularly public corporations and firms reliant on investors, is the least worst sector for dealing with sexual harassment, predation and misogyny.

“Best practice” is probably not an appropriate term in this context. But a short list of recent incidents shows just how toxic allegations of misogyny, predation or harassment can be for any business exposed to investors.

Last week, one of the London’s oldest hedge funds, Odey Management, was shuttered after the disgrace of its founder, Crispin Odey, who was forced out after the Financial Times revealed more than a dozen women had accused him earlier this year of sexual assault and harassment.

Earlier this year, the CEO of NBCUniversal was fired for sexual harassment. Here, the head of Vicinity was forced out late last year, around the same time as News Corp quickly exited Chris Dore, then editor-in-chief of The Australian. At AMP, 2020-21 was taken up with the scandal around the promotion of senior manager Boe Pahari and his alleged harassment of a female executive, which eventually led to Pahari, the company’s chair and a board member all leaving. In 2020, the CEO of AMP Australia also resigned suddenly amid allegations of misconduct.

Today’s contribution is lower profile: the semi-literate misogynist ravings of “start-up founder” Sam Joel forced him out of his company GiveTree (“uses crypto technology to help video gamers donate money” — apparently some people have actually invested in that) within a matter of hours.

Legislated workplace protections, the ability of victims to take firms to court, the growing power of big super fund shareholders, a growing distaste for traditional corporations’ methods of silencing victims — such as non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) — the willingness of staff to speak out publicly or within firms about misconduct and the feral reaction on social media to claims of misconduct have all forced companies to adopt a far lower tolerance for misconduct than even a few years ago.

Some industries remain profoundly misogynistic — male-dominated mining continues to be rife with sexual assault, endemic mistreatment of women and harassment in remote locations. But large companies now know they must be seen to move quickly and deal severely with any public indication of misconduct, or instead deal with angry investors.

That form of accountability, along with exposure to civil litigation over what happens in workplaces, is a powerful incentive, and one lacking in other elite institutions such as, for example, politics, where only voters can force a recalcitrant perpetrator out of office and their treatment will depend entirely on the political climate then prevailing. Or, for example, elite private educational institutions. More accurately, elite boys’ schools.

Consider the appalling comments of Dr John Collier, headmaster of Sydney’s elite Shore School, about the murderer of Lilie James at St Andrew’s Cathedral School, coverage of which has generally failed to examine what role St Andrew’s played in failing to ensure a safe workplace for James. The perpetrator — a coward who took his own life after murdering her — was described by Collier as “an absolute delight … a fine student, a prefect, a role model”.

As m’colleague Michael Bradley writes today, Collier’s comments were part of what looks to be a broader attempt to blame the murder on, or at least invoke as an accessory before the fact, secularism.

Collier’s comments are not merely shocking for his description of a murderer, but for his attempt to use the murder of a woman in service of his own ideological agenda. If Collier had made those comments as the CEO of a major corporation about an employee who had murderer a colleague, it’s likely there’d be relentless pressure on the board to either force him to issue a grovelling apology or sack him.

But there is no accountability mechanism to achieve this in his current position, which is one reason why elite private boys’ schools are a deeply toxic source of misogyny and sexual assault. Despite being held up to public scrutiny by brave women such as Chanel Contos, examples of the profoundly disturbing views of male students of some of Sydney’s most elite educational institutions continue to emerge, including treatment of female teachers. Nor is it limited to Sydney.

The toxic effects of private school cultures of misogyny have a long half-life, as demonstrated in the extraordinary treatment of Knox College alumnus Nicholas Drummond who directed sexist abuse at a woman and then assaulted her and another man on a night out in northern Sydney. Drummond was let off without a conviction after Judge Robert Sutherland decided that the woman’s dress “might have been perceived by a former student of Knox to be provocative” and that Hammond’s assault and abuse was an “aberration”.

Not merely is violence founded in misogynistic private school culture unpunished, it’s explained away by judicial figures.

Again, had Sutherland been speaking in a corporate context, his attempt to blame a victim for the abuse and assault she endured would have seen investors hammering the board for his removal.

Business should not be the leader of the pack when it comes to dealing with misogyny, sexual assault and harassment. Our elite institutions — politics, the judiciary, the schools that educate the upper economic class, all of them generously funded by taxpayers — should be the leaders and setters of the example of how to build workplace cultures of respect, safety and equality. Instead, it’s left to the private sector to slowly, far too slowly, make workplaces safe for women.