Six women held court for a few hours Saturday afternoon at the Bradford Area Public Library, serving on a panel to discuss gender discrimination and sexual harassment.

The discussion was moderated by Colette Roessler, and included Marcie Schellhammer, Anne Holliday, Dr. Nancy McCabe, Dr. Tracee Howell, Stephanie Eckstrom and Michele Alfieri-Causer.

Roessler explained the event was to kick off National Women’s History Month, and told a story about her mother, Gracia Melanson, who was the first woman in the state of Rhode Island to successfully sue an institution for gender discrimination.

“Statistically, anywhere from 25 to 85 percent of women have experienced sexual harassment in the workplace,” said Roessler. Also, “42 percent face discrimination in their job due to their gender.”

The panel members then shared their own stories.

Schellhammer, associate editor of The Era, was the first to speak. She talked about being a female reporter, and the challenges that come with it. She told several stories of her personal experiences over her two decades in the local news business.

For instance, Schellhammer was interviewing a U.S. Senate candidate a few years ago. He sat down by her and she turned to ask him a question.

“He grabbed my arm and said to me, ‘You’re just here to listen,’ and I wasn’t allowed to ask him anything at all. He talked for about 10 minutes before (former managing editor) Marty Wilder came over and said, “You can just leave.”

Schellhammer also discussed two types of discrimination she’s seen — one, where it is from the older generation, who are well meaning, but raised with different attitudes about equality, and the second, which “comes from cruelty,” and is meant to demean or belittle a woman.

Holliday, news director of WESB, echoed Schellhammer’s comments, adding that it says a lot for a small town that the two women are in charge of the newsrooms for the two main news sources in Bradford.

She talked about how the culture that kept people from sharing their stories, and the women who have since come forward.

“Nobody realizes that it was so ingrained — and is so ingrained — in society that they needed permission, if you will, or somebody like Gretchen Carlson or Rose McGowan or those people to lead the way and be the first to ones to say, ‘Yeah, I’m going to talk about this,’” said Holliday.

McCabe, professor of writing and director of the writing program at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford, spoke about issues she has encountered in her career in academia. One of the issues she discussed was how in writings about professional accomplishments, often, women are referred to by their first names, when men are referred to as professor or doctor. This is something she has been working to change.

“I think that one of the challenges we have is we keep having to prove that our stories really happened,” said McCabe. “We keep having to prove that discrimination really exists, and sometimes our conversation starts getting bogged down with this rather than figuring out ways to change our culture.”

She also spoke about “happily ever afters” in literature, There’s a common theme that when a woman commits adultery, she commits suicide at the end of the story. And the most common “happily ever after” is when a woman finds a man to love and marry.

“Let’s change the happily ever afters,” she suggested.

McCabe introduced Howell, director of English composition and the Writing Center at Pitt-Bradford, who told a story about her past. She went to a women’s college. She didn’t know much about the unequal treatment of women until she got a summer job in her native Olean, N.Y.

She was the first female in the factory’s maintenance department, and ended up doing most of the work until she stood up for herself. When a coworker tried to order her around, she swore at him and told him to do it himself.

“I think it’s because I borrowed the language of that world, all of a sudden I was looked upon with a measure of respect,” said Howell.

Howell introduced Eckstrom, program coordinator for the master of social work program at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford.

Among the topics Eckstrom touched on is the financial impact on women.

“We get the idea when women are confronted with sexual harassment, most of the time the strategy is to ignore it, to trivialize it, (to say) ‘It’s not a big deal; he didn’t mean anything by it.’”

Rather than to make a big deal, they will avoid the harassment — perhaps even leaving to avoid it. Standing up might get one labeled as a troublemaker, which can also cause job loss.

Eckstrom described the feelings associated with harassment — anger, self-doubt, depression and anxiety — and talked about how that affects work life.

Eckstrom introduced Causer, attorney and solicitor for McKean County Children and Youth. She gave legal definitions for sexual harassment, and shared some experiences she had as a young attorney first coming to McKean County.

At the time, she was hired by an office in Bradford. The other attorneys took her out to lunch to celebrate. They went to the Bradford Club, but at the time, women weren’t allowed to be members, and they had to sit in a back room.

She said it took her about two weeks to realize “how I was deprived of an opportunity that all the other young lawyers in the community had.”

The other lawyers went to the Bradford Club for lunch every day, which gave them networking opportunities she did not have.

At the end of the discussion, the panel fielded a few questions and comments from members of the public.

Mickey Swackhamer, of the YWCA Victims Resource Center, attended the event in case anyone needed to speak privately after the emotional event.