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Fox News settled for $20-million after former anchor Gretchen Carlson filed a sexual harassment lawsuit on July 6, 2016 against former Fox News chief Roger Ailes.Noam Galai

You'd be forgiven for thinking it's been a banner week in the fight against sexism in the workplace. On Tuesday, after all, it was announced that a U.S. court ordered Rupert Murdoch's Fox News to pay former anchor Gretchen Carlson $20-million (all figures U.S.) in a settlement after she sued the network for sexual harassment. For years, Carlson claimed, she was harassed and intimidated sexually and professionally by network chairman Roger Ailes, one of Murdoch's closest lieutenants.

Ailes resigned as network chairman in July after more than two decades at the helm of America's noisiest right-wing network – about 20 other women had come forward with similar complaints in the wake of Carlson's suit. At least two of those women have also settled out of court for undisclosed amounts. Ailes, who has since taken a role advising Donald Trump, remains unrepentant, insisting all the claims are bogus and proudly pointing out that Fox paid out the damages, not him.

Carlson's settlement is undeniably a lot of money compared to most settlements of its kind. The New York Times reported it as being "among the largest-known settlements for a single-plaintiff sexual harassment suit" in U.S. history. Unlike racial discrimination suits, many sexual harassment cases in the United States are subject to financial caps imposed in the 1990s. The result, according to a recent report by the publication ThinkProgress, is that for the tiny minority of women who end up taking their employers to court and then winning, the payouts are generally quite small – on average about $30,000.

Carlson's settlement was far richer than the norm because she is a highly paid public figure at a multi-billion-dollar network. Her abrupt departure – her contract was not renewed in June – and embroilment in the Ailes scandal have caused untold damage to her reputation, career and future earning power. Sadly, a long list of Fox News female anchors lined up to dismiss her claims against Ailes earlier this summer, including Greta Van Susteren, who is leaving the network herself. Carlson's perfect response to her female colleague's criticism? "They're still being paid by Fox." Exactly.

But what's frustrating about Carlson's case is not the fact that she's a unicorn in the world of workplace sexual harassment suits. It's the reality that the powerful man who harassed her was effectively paid double the amount she got in a golden parachute deal with the network. Yes, that's right, Roger Ailes received $40-million from Fox after Carlson brought her suit, twice the amount Fox was ordered to pay her for having been subject to his harassment. So where's the justice in that?

And although all the dollar figures in this story might seem staggering, broadly speaking, it's important to remember that sexual harassment suits are not a significant liability for most employers today. Why take measures to guard against something that rarely happens, and when it does, it won't cost you much if anything?

Carlson spent months collecting recorded evidence of Ailes's unapologetic sexual threats and bullying, but the fact is, for most women in the workplace, sexual discrimination is much more subtle and insidious – if no less pernicious.

That's why American author Jessica Bennett is urging a new generation of young professional women to take matters into their own hands. In her recently published book, Feminist Fight Club, Bennett tells the story of how she and group of 20- and 30-something girlfriends working in New York started getting together to vent about sexism at work, eventually forming the loose organization after which her book is named. "Recognizing sexism is harder than it once was," she writes. "Like the micro-aggressions that people of colour endure daily – racism masked as subtle insults or dismissals – today's sexism is insidious, casual, even friendly. It is a kind of can't-put-your-finger-on-it behaviour that isn't necessarily intentional or conscious. Sometimes women exhibit it, too. None of that makes it any less damaging."

Today's office sexism can be nearly invisible or simply laughed off as jocular good fun – such as the assigning editor who once advised that I "wear something low-cut" when offering me the assignment to interview an A-list male celebrity because "I hear he likes blondes." (Not because, you know, I might have been the best journalist for the job.) Women – and young women in particular – put up with untold amounts of subtle, sexually undermining behaviour that often wreak havoc with their professional confidence. And in the face of all these nearly invisible put-downs – being talked over in meetings, being dismissed or ignored by superiors, or subtly discouraged away from taking on more serious or challenging work – ambitious young women are encouraged to be extra nice since, as Bennett writes, "Men gain professional status when they act angry, viewed as 'passionate' about the job, while women lose status."

A book such as Feminist Fight Club, with it's funny, upbeat tips for recognizing and constructively combatting subtle workplace sexism, is a helpful handbook for young female professionals navigating in a brave new world. But in a landscape where powerful predators such as Ailes are still far more handsomely rewarded than the women they are guilty of harassing, it's hard to celebrate.

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