Fox’s Gretchen Carlson should have sued sooner

Oh Gretchen Carlson, if only you had filed your suit alleging sexual harassment against the Fox News chairman and CEO be

fore your afternoon show was dropped.

It would have had so much more impact.

Carlson, 50, a former Miss America and Stanford grad, alleges Roger Ailes, 76, “sabotaged her career because she refused his sexual advances and complained about severe and pervasive sexual harassment” during her 11 years with the TV network. Not surprisingly, Ailes has denied the allegations.

When I worked in a supervisory role at a news company, I was forced to downsize an employee’s job to a role she clearly didn’t want. I was a new boss, and I did not handle it well. The next day, I received a call from human resources advising me that this employee had filed a complaint alleging a litany of wrongs I had done to her over the year.

After an investigation, HR agreed I could have handled it better but concluded that her complaints were unwarranted. The complaints would have been taken more seriously if she had filed her grievances before the dramatic, unwanted change in job responsibilities.

I have no cause to disbelieve Carlson. But to me, she loses some of her effectiveness when it can be perceived — as Ailes claims — that the timing of her suit is retaliatory. Then there’s the uncomfortable elephant-inthe-room question: Would Carlson have filed a bombshell lawsuit if Fox had renewed her contract? Or would she have remained silent?

When I first questioned Carlson’s timing, a friend accused me of sounding like the Republicans who rushed to the defense of Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas in 1991. They questioned why attorney Anita Hill, who had worked closely with Thomas, put up with his inappropriate discussions of sex and pornography and followed him to a second job.

While Thomas went on to become a justice, Hill’s testimony did succeed in making workplace sexual harassment part of the national conversation. It is far more discussed and fought than it was 25 years ago. Does it still happen? No doubt, and I would imagine it is still frightening for women, especially young women, to stand up to sexual harassment and challenge it.

Carlson says she has “strived to empower women and girls throughout my entire career. Although this was a difficult step to take, I had to stand up for myself and speak out for all women and the next generation of women in the workplace.”

She had a choice to quit and go public in her career at Fox News and potentially bring about change in the work environment. She didn’t. Today, she is understandably upset that she lost her job and was treated poorly. But if she’s serious about wanting to empower women and fight sexual harassment, she must pursue this suit with all the feistiness, smarts and conviction she has brought to her job throughout her career.

Settling is not an option.