#MeToo. Five Years Later - A special edition of 'The Conversation'

On Oct. 5, 2017, the New York Times broke the Harvey Weinstein story, igniting a global conversation about sexual harassment. In its aftermath, more women started to tell their own stories in ways both big and small, by going to the press to expose their harassers, or simply by writing #MeToo on social media-and often their voices helped push the culprits out of their jobs. Five years later, we spoke with women who played a part in the movement to take stock of how society has-and hasn't-changed.

- By Maria Aspan, Erika Fry, Emma Hinchliffe, and Beth Kowitt

Longtime activist TARANA BURKE coined me too in 2006, well before the movement went viral in 2017. In Burke's iteration, the phrase was a way to support women and girls of color who have experienced sexual abuse.

BURKE: I knew at the five-year mark, the question everybody would be asking is what has #MeToo done? People have a tendency to want me to pull out a checklist. I've been pushing back on that framing. It's not so much about what has been done, but more so what #MeToo made possible. Because we actually live in a different world-the number of people whose lives have changed, the conversations that wouldn't have taken place, the shift in culture.

I've had a lot of disappointment over the last five years, don't get me wrong. The work was monumental in 2016, and the work is monumental in 2022 because the issue is monumental. But a path has been cleared because #MeToo went viral. I don't have to take as long to explain why this work is important. I don't have to beg people to make space to have this conversation. There was a time when I had to literally beg people to get this issue on an agenda. Now people want me on the agenda.

Ten years ago, ELLEN PAO filed a gender discrimination lawsuit against her then employer, legendary venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, which fired her a few months later. Pao lost a jury trial against Kleiner in 2015 but laid the groundwork for #MeToo in Silicon Valley.

PAO: I lost-but I feel like in many ways I won. Over time, the press and the public started to understand the problem, and became much more supportive at the end of the trial than they were in the beginning.