The genius of the #MeToo campaign is that it can be used for all kinds of purposes — good, bad and ugly. It’s a label that deliberately has no firm meaning but comes with a clear commandment. Once it is bandied about, we are all meant to bow down, agree that a man has done something dreadfully wrong that warrants a collective pile-on, repeated punishment, public shaming and often the end of his career.
In short, when something is deemed a #MeToo moment, we are meant to suspend our critical faculties. Complicating factors, grey areas that might arise between men and women, and any ulterior motives must be ignored.
For a bird’s-eye view on how exploiting #MeToo hurts women, go no further than the brouhaha that embroiled AMP last week. Salacious leaks about what one woman called “AMP’s #MeToo moment” prompted inflated headlines about women staging a “revolt” at the 170-year old company. The underlying story is years old, involving a settlement in early 2018 between a senior private equity expert and AMP regarding her claim of sexual harassment by the new boss of AMP Capital, Bodhisattwa (Boe) Pahari.
The complaint was subjected to an external investigation in 2017 by leading London QC Andrew Burns, who found “lower level” breaches of the company’s code of conduct. The clear inference is no touching, nothing physical occurred.
Nonetheless, Pahari was penalised financially, allegedly to the tune of a six-figure sum, counselled and warned. That’s one expensive alleged flirt. The investigation was undertaken when Catherine Brenner chaired AMP and Vanessa Wallace chaired AMP Capital. Indeed, the episode was dealt with when AMP’s board included a substantial contingent of women, including Holly Kramer and Patty Akopiantz in addition to Brenner and Wallace. It makes suggestions of a boys’ club comical and ill-informed.
This episode has been regurgitated because of Pahari’s recent promotion. He is one of the highest paid executives at AMP and his role is pivotal to the success of the AMP group. AMP Capital is the $192bn global asset management arm that delivered profits last year of $198m when AMP is still confronting the fallout from the royal commission. Within AMP Capital, Pahari has led the highly successful infrastructure team responsible for a good chunk of AMP Capital’s profits and is a critical part of AMP’s future strategy. The board, led by David Murray, reviewed that episode when deciding on Pahari’s promotion.
Clearly, Pahari’s role as the new head of this powerhouse arm of AMP has put some noses out of joint. We know that because someone at AMP taped conversations during a virtual town hall meeting last Wednesday where some disgruntled women aired their dissatisfaction over his appointment. Not all women did. Pahari has plenty of support from many women in his own team. But that secret recording was shared with The Australian Financial Review presumably for maximum damage.
During the secretly taped meeting, the same woman who declared that this is “AMP’s #MeToo moment” also said: “Is Boe truly the best we can do? He does not talk to people very nicely and he doesn’t have a good attitude and you just look at his picture — he’s terrifying.” To a curious mind, alarm bells are dinging on so many levels. For starters, an inquisitive person might ask themselves: who secretly tapes meetings at their workplace and leaks them to the media? This is no evidence to suggest this is a high-minded whistleblower. On the contrary, it’s an old allegation that was investigated and settled, not by a bunch of men but when AMP was led by several women.
An inquiring mind also might wonder: who else knew the meeting was being secretly recorded when they spoke at the meeting? Were they worded up so some colour might be thrown in for a juicy newspaper splash? You don’t need to be a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist to ponder whether ulterior motives are at play. Is someone disgruntled over not getting the top job? Perhaps they just don’t like Pahari. Maybe they think he’s wrong for the new role. None of these reasons warrants an orchestrated exploitation of #MeToo.
So far no one has bothered to ask whether a Ms Machiavelli — or Mr — is trying to exploit an old complaint for a personal motive, and suckering a media bedazzled by #MeToo into helping them get rid of a new chief executive. Hugely lucrative money-making arms such as AMP Capital attract very ambitious men and women. Yet, so far, parts of the media seem to have fallen hook, line and sinker for the #MeToo tag and suspended deeper analysis.
More important, there is something dreadfully wrong when women use the #MeToo movement to punish a man a second time, trying to deny him a promotion for a past transgression that was investigated and settled, by two women no less, who chaired the AMP companies involved. It debases a movement that is already flawed by trying to conflate everything from serious allegations of rape to a date night between consenting adults where the sex was ordinary.
And it does not help women in the workplace to toss around the #MeToo label so recklessly when other motivations are at play. Men who sexually harass women ought to be held to account. That was done here: Pahari was duly punished. There is no suggestion of him committing more transgressions, unless #MeToo is now a net so wide that it also catches a man who is promoted instead of woman.
Perhaps former Fox News celebrity Gretchen Carlson imagines she knows all the facts when she tweeted her views about AMP. Carlson’s treatment at the hands of Roger Ailes was truly awful. But that is no excuse for more objective members of the media to throw Pahari, who was punished for a “low-level” claim of sexual harassment, in with men such as Ailes, the former Fox News executive who had a tawdry record of sexual harassment, and Dyson Heydon, the former High Court judge who has been accused by multiple women of sexual harassment. The media equivalent of Salem-style witch-hunts is not interested in fairness.
Finally, it goes without saying that women should be more noble than judging a book by its cover. Imagine if, during a meeting to discuss a serious matter, a man said of a woman: “Just look at her picture — she’s terrifying,” to justify that she be stripped of her promotion. We would be outraged.
Instead of these secretly taped conversations suggesting that women are in revolt over AMP’s #MeToo moment, this campaign suggests that some women can be every bit as revolting, tricky and ambitious as men. That is the essence of equality. Alas, their conniving hasn’t advanced the #MeToo movement one jot. On the contrary, it has helped hoist #MeToo on its own petard.
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