Take a look behind Liz Claiborne Inc.’s stellar reputation in the philanthropic field, and you will find the utterly remarkable Jane Randel. As VP of Corporate Communications, Randel manages both internal and external communications, oversees all philanthropic programs, and has been the driving force behind the company’s award-winning cause marketing program aimed at raising awareness about and ultimately preventing violence against women. She is also a wife and a mother to three boys.
Her position in the world of fashion and beauty makes her willingness to take on the complex, ugly issue of intimate partner violence that much more remarkable. Since the mid-90s, she has been at the forefront of Liz Claiborne Inc.’s pioneering initiatives, including Love is Not Abuse, Love is Respect (the nation’s first teen dating abuse hotline), and MADE (Moms and Dads for Education to Stop Teen Dating Abuse). And this list doesn’t begin to cover her commitments to an impressive roster of organizations, including Joyful Heart.
Begin a conversation with Randel about intimate partner abuse, and she quickly reveals both her passion for knowledge about prevention, education and healing survivors’ wounds.
“Our intolerance of abuse is the greatest weapon we have to combat it,” she begins, leaning forward in her chair. “It’s not a simple fix. This issue is complicated—you can’t just go get a blood test or take away someone’s keys. We need to change the social norms. We need to change the way our society views abuse.”
Since the early 90s, Liz Claiborne Inc. has been working to do just that. The company researched which issues were important to its customers, and found that domestic violence was one of their chief concerns. Then they set out to do something about it.
“In the beginning, the goal was to help bring it out of the darkness and into the light; to make it safe to talk about. It was an awareness campaign,” Randel explains. “And the workplace is an ideal venue to reach out to people. It’s often the one place where victims feel safe. And often it will provide the means they would need to leave the relationship.”
While Randel proudly acknowledges progress in the areas of awareness and education over the last twenty years, she feels that there is still much work to be done, especially with regard to teen dating abuse. The issue tragically exploded into the nation’s consciousness earlier this year when pictures surfaced of recording artist Rihanna’s bruised and swollen face, the result of battering by her boyfriend, Chris Brown.
But the reaction of teens to the Rihanna/Chris Brown situation deeply troubles Randel. “They are so quick to condemn her and defend him. And it’s girls doing this” she says, referring to a study by the Boston Public Health Commission that revealed 46 percent of teens placing the blame for the assault on Rihanna. “There are obviously still powerful public misconceptions about this issue. People still ask ‘Why does she stay with him?’ The question that everyone should be asking is ‘Why did he beat her?’”
Randel is still determined to turn this into a teachable moment for our nation’s teens. “People misunderstand,” she explains. “They don’t see the prelude to the violent eruption, they only see the aftermath. They don’t see the way abusers craft the situation. How do you reach a teen and make her understand that receiving 30, 40, 50 text messages an hour from her boyfriend isn’t normal or healthy? Messages saying things like ‘What are you doing?’ or ‘Who are you with?’ or ‘Where are you?’, not ‘How are you?’—because the teens we surveyed made this distinction—how do you make them see that this isn’t about love?”
When pushed for an answer as to why, a decade into the 21st century, teenage girls didn’t come screaming to Rhianna’s defense, Randel falls silent for a moment. She chooses her words carefully: “I’m not sure they’re given permission to do that yet. In self-defense they teach that one of the most effective defenses women have against a potential attacker is to yell. But are we—are girls—taught to do that? We’re still taught to be quiet.”
Yet the difficulty of bringing about change doesn’t deter Randel from her mission. Her hope and her passion are as alive as ever. “I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to completely eradicate this kind of violence, but can’t we become a society that has no tolerance for it? Can’t we become a culture that places the blame squarely on the shoulders of the person perpetrating the violence, not the person who has to withstand it? We need to move toward becoming a society that is intolerant of abuse. That’s my goal.”
To learn more about the groundbreaking work Randel and Liz Claiborne Inc. are doing, check out: LoveisNotAbuse.com, LoveisRespect.org or look for MADE on Facebook.
