It's recently been revealed that over the years Fox News has paid $13 million to women who have accused Bill O'Reilly of harassment in the workplace. The women claimed the harassments ranged from demoting one because he didn't sleep with her, to calling another on the phone at night while, what she said sounded like, masturbating. O'Reilly denied these allegations.

Yet, there will be people who want to know why these women didn't just quit. Why didn't they just leave if they didn't like the way they were being treated by their boss?

Hell, that's how the Trump family thought Ivanka should respond if she was ever sexually harassed at work. Trump remarked that he hoped she'd quit. This attitude seems like a holdover from a time when careers were considered mere divertissements to women.

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Fox News has paid $13 million to women who have accused Bill O\'Reilly of harassment in the workplace.

Quitting your job might seem fine if you live in the 1950s, and are working at a cupcake shop solely because you are waiting to get married. However, that notion doesn't take into account that it's 2017. Most women either work because they very much need the money or because having a career is just as vital to their sense of self as it is to a man.

The notion that a woman can "just quit" takes neither of these factors into consideration.

It certainly doesn't take into consideration the fact that people who are constantly quitting jobs do not seem to climb especially high in careers.

When we tell women that they should quit a job—despite no wrongdoing on their part—we are reminding them that they're not supposed to be ambitious anyway. We're tacitly stating that, if their job is in any way unpleasant, maybe they'd just be happier at home with their kids. Or, you know, if you're on Fox news, you are saying that directly, right to the camera.

"We're tacitly stating that, if their job is in any way unpleasant, maybe they'd just be happier at home with their kids."

The women working at Fox have plenty of reasons to want to stay there. Fox is the top rated cable news channel today. I'm certain their employees make very good salaries. A woman, in short, might not be particularly eager to quit a job at which she has done nothing wrong because someone is being a disgusting creep to her.

And the solution in these situations seems to be "just put up with it."

Megyn Kelly detailed being sexually harassed by Roger Ailes at Fox. That prompted Bill O'Reilly—who really should have stayed out of this one—to say, "You don't like what's happening in the workplace, go to human resources or leave."

According to Kelly's account, Kelly did report the harassment to a supervisor. She was then told, "[Ailes] was likely just smitten, and recommended that I try to avoid him (which I hadn't realized was actually an option)."

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Megyn Kelly detailed being sexually harassed by Roger Ailes at Fox. That prompted Bill O\'Reilly to say, \'You don\'t like what\'s happening in the workplace? Go to human resources or leave.\

Of course avoiding your boss is not an option. There's no conceivable reason that recommending a path of strategic avoidance to women—and thereby making it their fault if they're harassed—is a more viable option than simply telling creeps not to be creeps. Unless, of course, companies just don't take working women as seriously as they do working men. As it is, companies put women in an impossible position, where they can either a) quit or b) accept they're going to be harassed to some degree.

So the women who come forward with these claims? They're not doing this on a whim. They're doing this because they're put in an impossible position.

And when they do come forward—likely because they rightly realize the position they are being put in is a bad one—they're smeared in almost every way possible.

"Companies put women in an impossible position, where they can either a) quit or b) accept they're going to be harassed to some degree."

The settlements against O'Reilly were paid to them only after they were labeled, sometimes publicly, sometimes internally, everything from loose women to "wannabes."

If they ask for a good deal of money, that's only sensible—because they're being made unemployable. Their lives don't get great after they get a payout. According to The New York Times the second woman to come forward "never worked in television news again. In the years after the dispute, she suffered from post-traumatic stress and spent years seeing a therapist, struggling to figure out how to create a new life."

That doesn't sound like it was a fun experience that resulted in a delightful life. Because most of these women didn't dream of having a million dollars. They just wanted to work in a field they liked. You know. Like everyone does. For some of these women who come forward, there is no second chance for the career they dream of.

So, stop telling them to quit. Start telling the men who harass them to quit instead.

From: Harper's BAZAAR US