Cruise ships: For passengers, they're a chance to see the world without having to give up constant access to cheese that makes America so great.
Photo by Jim G/Flickr.
Many of the women who work on board these cruise ships, however, report getting a raw deal.
Image via "Full Frontal with Samantha Bee"/YouTube.
Last month, Jezebel reported that, since November 2015, Norwegian Cruise Lines no longer offers employees access to emergency contraceptives (the morning-after pill) unless they've been raped or sexually assaulted, forcing many women who either get pregnant or fear becoming pregnant to quit their jobs if they want to access family planning services.
On an episode of "Full Frontal with Samantha Bee," Bee decided to interview several female former cruise ship employees to find out what was really going on behind the scenes.
What she found was disturbing and, sadly, all too real.
Image via "Full Frontal with Samantha Bee"/YouTube.
All the women she spoke to reported being subject to frequent sexual harassment on board and said that, when they reported it — surprise, surprise — many found their supervisors completely indifferent to their complaints.
(The cruise ship section starts about 1:45 in, but the whole video is worth a watch.)
This problem doesn't just happen on cruise ships, unfortunately.
Bee also mentioned park rangers at the Grand Canyon, who reported facing withheld meals and intimidation when they rejected sexual advances from colleagues, and female comedians in Los Angeles, who have started online discussion groups to trade stories of harassment — on stage and off — as well as sexual assault.
There are, obviously, depressing statistics about this.
Image via "Full Frontal with Samantha Bee"/YouTube.
A Cosmopolitan survey of women in the workplace from 2015 found that an incredible 1 in 3 respondents had been harassed on the job. An ABC/Washington Post poll from four years earlier puts the number at 1 in 4.
Can anything be done about it?
While workplace harassment isn't currently on the congressional docket, a bill that seeks to add new protections against sexual assault and violence on college campuses is currently making its way through the House and Senate. There's not much movement on it, however, and unfortunately, a similar bill that sought to make it easier to prosecute rape crimes in the military recently failed.
Our representatives won't feel the need to support these (or similar) measures unless we call them on it — and only vote for the ones that do. So let's do that.
And of course, the obvious...
Men (and women) can just ... stop sexually harassing and sexually assaulting their colleagues.
It's that simple!
Original video from "Full Frontal with Samantha Bee"/YouTube.
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