Firing Line: Kirsten Gillibrand

 Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (NY-D), an outspoken supporter of the #metoomovement spoke about infrastructure and sexual assault.

She starts off by talking about the difference between hard and soft infrastructure. Hard infrastructure often includes roads, bridges, and electric grids as examples. However, people often forget about soft infrastructure, which focuses on people.

“Schools, affordable daycare, pre-k, paid leave. This is the care economy, and if the care economy is not functioning, everything else falls apart,” she said.

Its very important to have this in place, especially since women are taking paid leave to help their children who are remote living.

One way to help employees with paid leave is by introducing legislature that will take $2 out of a person’s check per week. This will be stored in a savings account and given back to them when they have to take paid leave.

She also spoke about sexual assault reporting reforms in the US Military. One major reform will have military officer send in case reports for sexual assault claims to an independent, military prosecutor rather than to a commander in the military.

“Our allies have already done it. Israel, UK, Canada, Australia, Netherlands, Germany.” These same countries have found that there were no diminutions for either command control or in discipline when enacting this reform.

A big reason why a lot of women do not report sexual assault in the military is because their harassers and rapists tend to be the commanders.

Often times, when they accuse them of sexual assault, the case file is directly sent to the same commander who raped them. This law will allow more women to be open and honest about sexual assault in the military.