The Women-Friendly Workplace and Campus Campaign is NOW's proactive project aimed at stopping sexual harassment and other workplace abuses. NOW has been active on workplace issues throughout our history, from our successful efforts to end sex-segregated help-wanted ads to our current campaign to stop sexual and racial harassment at Mitsubishi Motors and Smith Barney. The Women-Friendly Workplace and Campus Campaign puts a framework around all our efforts to end workplace discrimination and abuse and encourage employers to have family-friendly policies.

This is the right time to move forward with this campaign. From automobile assembly lines in Normal, Illinois to stock brokerage firms on Wall Street — from strawberry fields in Watsonville, California to military training grounds in Aberdeen, Maryland — women face unfair hurdles at work.

We know that harassment and abuse are ways to knock women and people of color out of the competition for higher-paying jobs and higher education. The Women-Friendly Workplace and Campus Campaign addresses problems in workplaces and schools across the nation — from factories to boardrooms to classrooms. This campaign gives consumers the organizing tool that they need to use their clout in the marketplace to demand women-friendly workplaces.

Campaign Components

• Consumer's Pledge for individuals to sign, agreeing to support businesses that are women-friendly.
• Employer's Pledge that includes a promise to adhere to minimal standards for a Women-Friendly Workplace.
• Merchants of Shame — those businesses that have bad track records when it comes to harassment, discrimination or assault in the workplace — will be targeted for direct actions and consumer pressure campaigns.
• Corporate Campaigns will be implemented to pressure businesses from the inside. We will lobby all corporate interests — from CEOs to shareholders — to make their workplaces women-friendly.