 Hi, I'm Salvatore Bobona, and today's lecture is Global Social Problem of the Week, Me Too in Developing Countries. The Me Too meme was coined in 2006 by American human rights activist, Tarana Burke, to raise awareness of the continuing pervasiveness of sexual abuse. She meant it as an expression of solidarity to communicate to the victims of sexual abuse that they were not alone. The meme was popularized by actor Alyssa Milano in response to widespread allegations against producer Harvey Weinstein in October 2017. Thus was born the hashtag Me Too, which is now a global meme translated into dozens of languages and reaching the whole world. On October 5th, 2017, The New York Times reported extensive sexual abuse allegations against the prominent film producer Harvey Weinstein. Now, Weinstein, in case you don't know him, is a really big time producer who's produced over 300 movies and TV shows, titles you'll recognize like Pulp Fiction, Goodwill Hunting, Scary Movie, Seal Team Six, and even Project Runway. Weinstein, however, reportedly abused dozens of female employees and prospective employees, both famous and obscure. And I should say reportedly abused dozens is suspected of perhaps abusing hundreds, although we really don't know. His abuse was repeatedly reported to his firm, to business partners, to anyone you could imagine in the industry who worked with him. But due to his commercial success, people continued to employ him, continued to work with him, continued to invest in his company. Essentially continued to treat him as a respectable member of the business community. Weinstein's seeming immunity from law and morality rested on his multiple dimensions of power over his victims. As one victim put it, I am a 28-year-old woman trying to make a living in a career. Harvey Weinstein is a 64-year-old world-famous man and this is his company. The balance of power is me, 0, Harvey Weinstein, 10. And I think that really encapsulates the problem. The problem is that Harvey Weinstein wasn't just male and his victims were female. He wasn't just middle age and his victims were young. He wasn't just an employer and his victims were employees. He wasn't just a film producer and his victims were aspiring actors. He was all of these things and they were all of those things. Multiple dimensions of power put Harvey Weinstein in a position of advantage over his victims. Weinstein was even a major donor to Hillary Clinton's campaigns, reportedly bundling $1.4 million in donations, mainly from Hollywood donors. Bundling is a practice in US politics where one person will arrange campaign contributions from many other people, bringing them in as donors to the campaign. The Clinton campaign had been warned about his reputation, but of course when you're a famous producer bringing in millions of dollars of campaign contributions, you can get away with a lot of problems. Due to his power and money, warnings about his behavior were ignored and not just ignored in the business community, ignored in the political community. One email from Lena Dunham, the actor and comedian to the Clinton campaign, literally said, quote, I just want you to let you know that Harvey is a rapist and this is going to come out at some point. I think it's a really bad idea for him to host fundraisers and be involved because it's an open secret in Hollywood that he has a problem with sexual assault. Yet these warnings were ignored, I think, likely because of the money and the visibility that he was able to bring in to people who worked with him. The Weinstein scandal instantly opened a global conversation when it broke in October, but the actor, Alyssa Milano, is the person credited with turning it into a global meme with a tweet on October 16th in which she said, if you've been sexually harassed or assaulted, write, quote, Me Too, as a reply to this tweet. And the funny thing is, Alyssa Milano did not apparently use the hashtag Me Too. She said to write Me Too, but her tweet got 50,000 likes, 24,000 retweets, thousands of women and men tweeting Me Too and eventually using the hashtag Me Too to demonstrate their solidarity with each other, sharing their stories of sexual harassment or sexual assault. Of course, the Me Too meme quickly morphed into a global social movement with much of the attention focused on the US entertainment industry but with a much broader buy-in from the global public. So we all know that if the Oscars, Me Too was a major theme of protest at the Oscar ceremonies this month, but it's not just been the Oscars. It's been at all levels of society. It's important to realize that in society at large, sexual abuse is both class-related and multiply-intersectional, meaning that socially excluded groups suffer multiple disadvantages and those multiple disadvantages coalesce into extreme power differentials that are ripe for exploitation, especially for sexual exploitation. So to begin with, women are at greater risk than men. But on top of that, young people are at greater risk than middle-aged people. Sexual minorities are at greater risk than heterosexuals. Racial minorities are at greater risk than whites, at least in the United States. Less educated people are at greater risk than more educated people. Poor people are at greater risk than richer people. And these aren't just assertions. These are all quantifiable power differentials that we have data on actually about rates of sexual assault having these differentials across all of these power disadvantages. But imagine if you are female, young, a member of a sexual and racial minority, less educated, poor, that puts you at an extreme multiple risk of sexual abuse. In less developed countries, those problems are exacerbated by weaker legal protections and weaker norms of equality. Women of all ages, for example, face much greater risks of sexual abuse in countries where women lack full legal or social equality with men. LGBT people and other sexual minorities are at severe risk where homosexuality is criminalized or migrant workers can be at severe risk in countries where they lack legal standing or legal rights or where their employers may be in charge of their legal status, their visas, their ability to live in the country. According to the World Bank, I'll just give some examples for each of these. According to the World Bank, there are 32 countries in which women cannot even apply for a passport without permission from a male guardian. That's more than 10%, that's more than 15% of the countries of the world. Now, India is a country, India is the target example here. India is a country where women have the legal right to apply for a passport without permission from their husband. But there are widespread reports of courts in India and registrars in India actually requiring a husband's permission. Even though the law says that women are completely emancipated in India, nonetheless, often lower level officials don't enforce law and actually try to prevent women from getting passports. In addition to that, India has a serious problem, like much of South Asia has a serious problem with child marriage and child marriage often meaning marriage of girls, of young girls to adult men. These are rates of child marriage in India by state with Rajasthan in northwest India having the highest rate, almost 4% of all teenage girls are married as teenagers. And this is something that cuts across all religions in India. So it's not just a Hindu problem or a Muslim problem or a Sikh problem or a Buddhist problem, it's a problem for all religions and all groups in India. Now, in India there are very serious efforts both by the government and by civil society to prevent child marriage. In other neighboring countries, especially in Pakistan, there's much less civil society pressure to limit child marriages. So in some of India's neighboring countries the problem can be even worse, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka. Another example is the problems faced by LGBT and other sexual minorities. As of 2016, homosexuality and other sexual minorities were still a criminal offense in 74 countries. Now to put that in perspective, again, that's over one third of the countries in the world criminalized homosexuality, which of course puts homosexuals and other sexual minorities at extreme risk of exploitation and blackmail. If your employer has any kind of information that you may or even suspicion that you may engage in homosexual behavior, that gives your employer extreme power over you to blackmail you into sexual activities. Note in this map, this also lists the countries where there's recognition of same-sex unions and Australia, of course, since this map was made, has recently transitioned into the category where same-sex marriage is allowed. And a similar problem affects migrant workers and maybe the most severely targeted group are live-in foreign domestic workers, that is, foreign maids who live especially throughout Southeast Asia, South Asia, and the Middle East where it's very common to have migrant worker maids from other countries. Very often maids come from the Philippines or Indonesia and they're very open to sexual abuse because they live with the families that employ them. The families that employ them have control over their visas, so if the family ceases to employ them, they lose their visa, all of this makes them extremely vulnerable to sexual exploitation and sexual pressure. On top of that, in most countries, only unmarried women are allowed to serve or are allowed to be employed as foreign maids or women who don't have children. They're almost never allowed to have boyfriends or male relatives in the country, so they're effectively being set up for sexual exploitation. This is not a small number of women. This picture shows maids on a day off in Singapore. This is a practice throughout Singapore, Hong Kong, the Persian Gulf, maids having only one day off a week in Singapore and Hong Kong or maybe no days off at all where they're only friends or other poor, young, unmarried women from their own countries of origin where they have virtually no connection to the societies in which they live. And we're talking about several million, if not tens of millions of women, not a small number. Key takeaways. First, the hashtag MeToo social movement started in the U.S. entertainment industry in October 2017, but has since spread widely. Second, vulnerability to sexual abuse is intersectional, meaning that multiply excluded people face the most severe vulnerabilities to sexual abuse. And finally, vulnerability to sexual abuse is extreme in countries with weak legal protections and weak norms of equality where women or anyone subject to sexual abuse may not feel comfortable or may even be legally barred from seeking redress through the justice system. Thanks for listening. Again, I'm Salvatore Bobonis. You can find out more about me at my website, SalvatoreBobonis.com, where you can also sign up for my monthly Global Asia newsletter.