FDIC chair faces calls to resign after audit details toxic work culture at agency

Rebecca Ballhaus, The Wall Street Journal:

Yes, it was really a pretty astounding period of talking to these women over many months.

What I heard was just these horrifying descriptions of harassment they faced from their supervisors, which ranged from supervisors talking about going to strip clubs in front of them, supervisors talking about how women needed to sleep with people to get ahead at the FDIC, just the way that they spoke to women, talking about their appearances and making comments about their eligibility to be dated.

It was just a lot of pretty horrifying stuff, but I think what really stood out to me in my reporting was — were some of the structural elements. So the way that the FDIC works with bank examiners is, it hires people directly out of college. So you’re sending, in some cases, young women out into the middle of the country to conduct these bank exams.

They’re going out to visit the banks, often with mostly all-male teams. Their teams are often much older than them. And you can just see how a situation like that is going to be rife for that sort of conduct. And I think the fact that there wasn’t much of — wasn’t much in place to sort of guard against that really showed in the reporting.