[A-List] US imperialism: liberating women?

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Much is made of the sexual equality and cultural enlightenment of the
modernity being promoted by the US in its "humanitarian intervention" mode.
People like Christopher Hitchens use it as a justification for bombing
Afghanistan for example. I expect, then, that he will be demanding an aerial
bombardment of Wall Street forthwith, on the basis of this evidence.


A shameful chapter in the recent history of Wall St
By David Usborne in New York
The Independent on Sunday, 17 November 2002

The mud that has been cascading down on Wall Street has taken on a more
lurid hue following the publication in the US of a shocking book that
details years of abuse and intimidation of female brokers by their groping
and sex-obsessed male colleagues.

Although the book - Tales of the Boom Boom Room - expands mostly on a legal
case filed by former employees of Smith Barney that was settled four years
ago, it includes details never before revealed. Many of the pages,
describing everything from foul language to lap-dancing in the workplace,
are not family reading.

The book's author, Susan Antilla, a reporter with Bloomberg News, worked on
the case when it was heading for the courts. In her no-holds-barred tome,
she also explores the misery of women who worked during the boom of the
1990s at other small brokerages and at Merrill Lynch, which was similarly
sued.

At the centre of the action is a branch of Smith Barney, now a unit of
Citigroup, in Garden City, a Long Island suburb of New York City. The main
protagonist is its former manager, Nicholas Cuneo, depicted as a boor who
encouraged a locker-room atmosphere while gleefully denigrating women in the
office.

One of them, Pam Martens, finally snapped and gathered evidence to sue the
firm for discrimination. Ms Martens emerges as a kind of Erin Brockovich,
whose triumph over a California energy company that poisoned a city's water
supply inspired the film starring Julia Roberts.

The book's title refers to a basement room opened by Mr Cuneo at the Garden
City office as a place for his male staff to "unwind". A lavatory bowl was
hung from the ceiling, and a "Happy Hour", with cocktails and beer, was
sometimes declared at 10am. Lap-dancers were invited, and male brokers
showed off guns and exposed themselves.

While there are scattered claims of attempted rape and of women leaving
their jobs in despair or considering suicide, most of what emerges is a
pattern of verbal abuse and daily humiliation. Women were regularly paid
less than their male counterparts, and excluded from lunches.They entered
the Boom Boom Room at their peril. A stripper once performed in the main
trading room.

Under Mr Cuneo's regime, female workers were called "tits and slits". One
woman came to work to find herself praised on a message board for her
alleged skill at giving sexual favours. Another overheard a colleague say:
"As soon as a woman squeezes out a kid, you stamp 'a million dollars' on the
kid's forehead and 'stretched goods' on the woman's."

The book is published at a time when Citigroup and Merrill Lynch are under
federal investigation for conflict of interest violations, mostly focused on
researchers boosting companies of dubious worth to build business. For the
public to be reminded of their history of sexual discrimination is far from
welcome. A spokeswoman for Smith Barney, which settled with the women
plaintiffs and dedicated $15m (£9.5m) to revamp its equal opportunity
policies, said it was all in the past. The firm, she asserted, was "proud of
the significant strides made over the past several years to become an
employer of choice, committed to giving every employee the opportunity to
achieve his or her full potential".