---

Sponsored by the Friends of the Pasadena Commission on the Status of Women and the City of Pasadena Commission on the Status of Women.

 Inspiration for the Project
"No one has ever explained the higher rate of
unemployment and job turnover among women…"
--- Equal Value: An Ethical Approach to Economics and Sex
by Carol S. Robb.

Purpose
This is a 28-minute video production designed as an educational/training tool to be used in organizational and classroom programs on sexual harassment and sex discrimination. The video will also be shown at Women's Studies and other academic conferences where women will be largely in attendance.

 Audience
This video program is aimed at current and future working women, inclusive of all ages, ethnicity, socio-economic and organizational situation and levels.

 Message

• This program carries the message that the economic/financial costs of sexual harassment and sex discrimination in the workplace are not temporary.
• Rather, the costs have a long-term effect on a woman's lifetime economic growth and contribute to a downward spiral of her economic/financial stability, with inter-generational implications.
• The program aims to highlight the link between sexual harassment and the cycle of downward mobility, unemployment (or under-employment) and poverty among women.
  

Desired Outcome following viewing
We hope this program will demonstrate to women viewers...
...that putting up with sexual harassment opens the door to a lifetime downward economic spiral.
...that patriarchal systems are invested in understating, and thus attempting to conceal, the costs to the victim.
...that the employed woman must inform herself about her employers' sexual harassment policies.
...that she must know the formal procedures for filing grievances, and
...that she must understand the cost to her lifetime economic stability of failing to take early and appropriate action.

Design of the Video Project
This video does not provide the details of the harassment the women were subjected to. The video project itself is made up of interviews with two women who have suffered a range of economic losses due to sex discrimination and sexual harassment in their work environments.

• Jackie Shelton is 43 and African American; she worked as a technician in the electronics assembly industry for 8 years; she tried to use internal company remedies to gain relief but finally filed a legal case, lost, and is appealing her case.
• Ellen Snortland is 48 and Caucasian. Ellen simply walked away from her promising career as a network television director in the entertainment industry.
• Christina Fuentes, a financial planner, speaks on the short term and long-term economic/financial effects of sexual harassment and sex discrimination at work.
• Joe C. Hopkins, a sexual harassment and discrimination attorney, speaks on the economic costs of pursuing legal remedies; the inadequacy of monetary judgments in the woman's favor that fail to compensate her fully for economic and emotional losses; the economic/financial costs of losing the case, such as having to pay defendant's legal fees.
  

---

About the Filmmakers

Charlotte Blackmon Collins has an M.A. in Critical Studies of Film & Television and teaches writing at the University of California, Irvine. She has produced educational and training video for 20 years. One of her projects is in the Smithsonian Institution in Women's History Archives. She is currently working on a series of video projects on women's access to the economy, of which this is the first.

Gerda Govine-Ituarte, Ed.D., has designed educational and training programs for schools, colleges and other public and private organizations through her consulting firm. She is a writer, political and community activist and past chair of the Pasadena Chamber of Commerce. She currently chairs the Friends of the Pasadena Commission on the Status of Women. She is also an expert witness in sexual harassment and discrimination legal cases.

Gerda Govine-Ituarte, Friends Chair, and Charlotte Blackmon Collins
Producers of the Friends' Video

Click here to go to the Video Order Form.
Return to homepage