Sunny Hostin shared her personal struggles with workplace harassment during her early years as a lawyer in a Friday discussion on “The View.”
Hostin, 55, claimed that after undergoing a breast reduction, she, like her female colleagues, refrained from reporting harassment since they were concerned about the potential negative effects on their careers.
“When I was coming up at the Justice Department and when I was coming up in law firms … we had options [to report harassment], but I wouldn’t dare use them,” Hostin continued. “So as not to be blackballed out of a position because the structure, it was a patriarchy.”
While reflecting on co-host Joy Behar’s recently published essay on workplace harassment, Hostin revealed the lengths she went to in order to be recognized for her professional abilities rather than her physical appearance.
“I recall so many interviews as a young lawyer where men never looked at my face. They just looked straight at my chest,” Hostin said. “And I started binding my breasts so that I could get a job on my qualifications.”
The conversation expanded as Alyssa Farah Griffin, White House Director of Strategic Communications for former President Trump, echoed Hostin’s sentiments, sharing her own experiences with workplace harassment despite the generational gap between them.
“I was talking to some of our younger producers and it mirrored some of the experiences we had in the workplace,” Griffin shared. “I had a direct boss when I was working on Capitol Hill — all the same things. We wore higher neck tops, we wore looser pants and … there’s not really an HR, surprisingly, in Congress.” (RELATED: ‘The View’ Co-Hosts Spar After Alyssa Farah Griffin Says She Still Supports Nikki Haley)
Griffin claimed that she and the other women eventually united and succeeded in getting their boss dismissed from his position.
“Every single woman has experienced harassment,” Griffin remarked. “The difference now — because of women like [Behar] and your generation — is there is places to report it and we have words to describe what it was that we experienced. We don’t just dismiss it.”
