Time's Up

Time's Up is an organization formed in Hollywood in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal to promote safe and fair workplaces. Its significance in the account lies in the reach of that purpose beyond the film industry and in its connection to women who had made harassment public, including Ashley Judd, who joined its board.

Formation and Purpose

Time's Up began in response to the Weinstein scandal, with a stated aim of promoting safe and fair workplaces. The account describes it as an organization that started in Hollywood and then spread far beyond it. That expansion placed its workplace-focused mission in a broader setting: accounts of harassment emerged from industries with different working conditions, from restaurants and hotels to construction and technology. The evidence does not describe particular Time's Up programs or campaigns, but it establishes the organization as an effort to carry a demand for safer, fairer work beyond entertainment.

Ashley Judd and Public Leadership

Judd joined the Time's Up board after the Weinstein story was published. By then, she had been praised as a heroine, received awards, and accepted a teaching post at Harvard Kennedy School, where she was due to begin in fall 2019 with the title Leader. She had also filed a lawsuit against Harvey Weinstein alleging harassment, defamation, and loss of career opportunities. These roles brought public recognition, legal action, and workplace advocacy into close view; her board membership connected her personal experience to an organization seeking change beyond an individual case.

The public response to Judd’s account was visible in everyday encounters as well as formal recognition: strangers approached to thank her, and on one occasion people waited as she got off a plane. Her prominence did not erase the personal and professional costs associated with speaking publicly, but it showed how an account of harassment could make a woman a public figure and a participant in organized advocacy.

A Wider Circle of Workplace Voices

The book places Time's Up’s expansion alongside a gathering of women whose experiences differed sharply by occupation, income, and public standing. At a California home, participants included Judd and Kim Lawson, a McDonald's worker who was earning $10 an hour after having been homeless six months earlier. Zelda Perkins, a former Miramax employee who had challenged confidential settlements in the British Parliament, was also there. Their different circumstances made clear that speaking out and seeking safer work did not belong to one profession or social position.

Rowena Chiu, who had not yet spoken publicly about her story, described the scarcity of Asian voices coming forward and connected that silence to the expectation that Asian people should not make a fuss. The gathering was an interview arranged by the journalists, not an event identified as a Time's Up activity. Still, its juxtaposition of women from different backgrounds gives context to the organization’s stated reach beyond Hollywood: the workplace issue crossed industries, while the risks and resources involved in speaking varied considerably.

Significance

Time's Up represents an organizational response to harassment that links individual disclosure with a wider demand for fair and safe workplaces. The account anchors that role in its origins after the Weinstein scandal, its spread beyond Hollywood, and Judd’s board membership. It also sets that institutional effort against the differences among workers’ lives: public recognition and formal influence existed alongside low wages, recent homelessness, and cultural pressures against speaking out. The organization’s significance, as presented here, is therefore both its outward reach and the broader question its mission raises about whose working conditions and voices are included.