You might have come across the phrase “Time’s Up” in the last week or so. Whether on your Facebook feed or in the New York Times op-ed or as a more hyped up, less delivered segment at the golden globes, it has been gaining momentum in the same way Tarana Burke’s “Me Too” movement gained a new face as allegations of sexual assault and misconduct plagued all sectors of the workplace late last year. In the wake of all of those allegations and another chapter in the conversation of sexual assault and how it affects women, especially women of color and sexual minorities and in the workplace, Time’s Up came to fruition.
The new year began with an open letter signed by hundreds and hundreds of women in various aspects of the entertainment industry. In it they vow to continue to use their various platforms to create safer places of work, creating accountability across every industry for every person. The Time’s Up website was created to address “the systemic inequality and injustice in the workplace that have kept underrepresented groups from reaching their full potential.” It has become a resource for survivors of sexual assault in every walk of life; the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund has already raised more than 16 million dollars, where funds are allocated to give legal aid to those unable to fight their cases of harassment and violence.
Time’s Up is an addition to the already long history of fighting for gender equality, one that has largely rested on the shoulders of women, heavier on the shoulders of women of color. As the work of Time’s Up and Me Too and even the “fashion statement” of the golden globes has shown, women have had to be the leaders of a fight they did not start. Hollywood’s big night was a perfect reflection of the issue at large, a lot of talk about things needing to change without any real substance as to how that change would go about being implemented. Hollywood men and men in other industries of power, whose alleged harassment and abuse created the need for Me Too and Time’s Up in the first place, have not been questioned and have not had the conversations to the degree that women have. Yes, these movements are rooted in the desperate need to change a culture that treats women as second class citizens, fearing for their security and their economic stability, but these movements are necessary because of the overwhelming majority of men who are the perpetrators of that treatment and that abuse. These are conversations that women have to have for their very livelihoods but ones that men need to have because it is their issue too, it is their issue first.