Long before the Me Too movement entered the national consciousness, Janine Brookner was on a one-woman crusade to expose abuses taking place behind government walls. She knew about sexual harassment — because, she says, she had experienced it herself in her quarter-century working as a spy in the CIA’s clandestine service. She says she was sexually harassed by around a dozen men, including three married division chiefs. Reporting those incidents would have been “career suicide,” she explains, so at the time, she stayed silent. But when, at the height of her career, the agency ironically charged her with having sexually harassed some of her male employees, among other allegations, she fought back — and prevailed.
Only about one-quarter believed they knew the maternal mortality rate in their country (the number of women who die from pregnancy or childbirth) or the percent of women in the labor force. One in eight believed they knew how many girls got married before 18. And over half were so shaky on the subject of early marriage that they weren’t comfortable wagering a guess about rates in their own country.