Women's Rights Employment Law Blog

A detailed report on EEOC perspective appears on the National Law Journal.

By Tresa Baldas

The federal government has launched an initiative aimed at cracking down on discriminatory hiring practices in the workplace -- a program that could land unsuspecting employers in court, employment attorneys are warning.

That's what happened to Walgreen Co. this month, lawyers note, when the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission hit the national pharmacy chain with a class action alleging widespread racial bias against thousands of African-American workers. EEOC v. Walgreen Co., No. 07-172, (S.D. Ill.).

The suit came one week after the EEOC announced "E-RACE" (Eradicating Racism and Colorism from Employment), an initiative that will have federal investigators paying much closer attention to how minorities are hired and promoted.

FOCUS ON HIRING

Specifically, the EEOC will focus on hiring decisions that are based on names, arrest and conviction records, employment and personality tests and credit scores -- all of which may disparately impact people of color.

For example, an African-American might be denied a job when an arrest record shows up on a background check or if a credit score turns out to be low. Such criteria, which have a disparate impact on minorities, were not considered in the past. But employers are increasingly considering such factors when hiring, and may unwittingly be denying jobs to large classes of minorities.

Many states have laws that restrict employers from asking about or considering criminal records when hiring. The EEOC holds that if an employer denies a job to an applicant because he or she has a criminal record, it could be considered discrimination if the person is a minority.

The EEOC also has a new specialized task force -- formed last year -- that will handle evidence turned up by E-RACE. Regional attorneys and directors will investigate in more detail and attempt to establish a pattern of discrimination within industries or employers, and present it to headquarters for possible litigation.

"I don't want employers to get the impression that they're some kind of bull's-eye," said EEOC attorney Paula Bruner, special assistant to the EEOC chairwoman. "We want them to be aware they need to step up in terms of their compliance with our laws."

According to the EEOC, race discrimination complaints continue to be the number one complaint made to the EEOC. In 2006, a total of 27,238 such complaints were filed. The EEOC also has seen a substantial increase over the past 15 years in discrimination claims based on color, which have soared from 374 in 1992 to 1,241 in 2006.

Continue reading "EEOC Cracks Down on Discriminatory Hiring Practices" »

SHANNON LEDGER in Feministing.com offers a case for her being a feminist--

No matter how far I come to think we have evolved as a movement and as a society, somebody is always there to remind me of just how much work there is still to be done. I am a feminist, no doubt about it. And although I'm fairly positive that this aspect of myself naturally shines through upon meeting someone, I still get that sort of dumbfounded facial expression when this realization occurs, which is almost always followed up with that doubtful, snooty question of "Why?" Why am I a feminist.
Are you serious? You actually need an explanation for my fight for equality?
"But, really, what is there to still be fighting for?" That's another one I've grown accustomed to hearing.

So.

Fed up with being knocked off my feminist high-horse, I've decided to explain myself, once and for all. Please keep in mind that my reasoning is not limited to the following; but rather the following is to serve as a little peek into my mind. Hopefully, it will allow you to see through the eyes of your feminist loved one a little more clearly, or perhaps you yourself can relate to my frustrations and that feeling of reciprocating dumbfoundedness when I am asked, "Why are you a feminist?" Well, here it goes folks. Listen and listen hard, because I refuse to respond to this ridiculous question a second time.

Why am I a Feminist!?

**Because I am still being asked this god damned question.
**Because I have to watch my creeps who prowl the streets at night just waiting to act out their hatred.
**Because almost every profession to date has been, and remains to be dominated by men.
**Because the majority of people on welfare are women who have been left to fend for their families by the fathers of the children. All this in a world that's already doing enough to work against them in the first place.
**Because women-made art is still viewed as an exception to the rule, to the perfection of "regular" man-made art.
**Because a woman's right to control her own fucking body is still a heavily debated issue.
**Because, due to the stigmas that our culture has attached to the idea, many women are still hesitant to stand up for their gender---To say, "Yes, I am a woman and I am a feminist."
**Because women's bodies are used as sexual objects to sell everything from beer to automobiles and everything in between.
**Because many men are still threatened by a woman that's got her shit together.
*Because douche is still on the market.
*Because we as women have yet to vanquish the animosity ---the jealousy--- that we are taught to feel towards one another.
*Because one in four college-aged women has some sort of eating disorder.
*Because the history of women and minorities is still only considered on their designated holidays.
*Because the movement has yet to succeed in meeting the needs of women who are not white and middle class.
*Because men in my past have tried to force me into the role of the damsel in distress.
(a feeble attempt mind you. Raaawr!)
*Because I know what it's like to be mistreated on the job solely based upon my being female.
*Because I can count the men I know who consider themselves to be feminist on less than one hand.
*Because most girls I know won't get in the pit at a show for fear of being pummeled to death by big beefy guys who can't be bothered to notice the human face they just stomped on. Fuck you, We're not your fucking coat racks!
*Because not a day goes by where I don't hear a fellow woman being referred to as a "slut," or some other splendidly humiliating name.
*Because I know what it feels like to be the one in four.
*Because it took a tragedy like 9-11 for the world to consider the Taliban a threat to humankind.
*Because we still live in a world of misogyny.
And because society has yet to give me a reason NOT to be.

That is why I am a feminist. Now, any questions?!?!?!?

Iowa Senate has a heartening news.

By Todd Dorman
Lee Newspapers

DES MOINES - A bill prohibiting discrimination against gays and lesbians in Iowa won Senate approval Monday over the objections of critics who predicted the measure would harm small businesses and open the door to lawsuits.

Backers of the bill, mostly Democrats, pushed it to passage on a 32-17 vote. They portrayed the legislation as a needed strike against discrimination that would also make the state more economically attractive.

The bill, Senate File 427, would add the words "sexual orientation" and "gender identity" to the Iowa’s Civil Rights Act, which currently bars discrimination based on age, race, creed, color, sex, national origin, religion and disability.

The act specifically targets discrimination tied to employment, housing, public accommodations, education and credit.

"Today, we have the opportunity to reaffirm that in Iowa, job performance is what counts, not what you look like, not what church you attend, not how old you are or who you love," said Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal, D-Council Bluffs, who led debate on the bill.

"It is difficult to convince a talented young person to come to Iowa or stay in Iowa when they can be discriminated against simply because of who they are," Gronstal said.

Exhausting most other options to rationally forbid abortion, a new law actually ridicules basic minimum standards of empathy. And of women’s rights.

That--after hours of debate--the South Carolina House could approve a bill that would mandate women to see a fetal ultrasound before deciding for abortion, speaks for the dismal state of women in the country today. More disappointing is the manner in which the voting passed the bill: 91-23, clearly indicating a sexist dominance in the juridical mainland.

Opponents of the bill decry it as “emotional blackmail”. The reality is worse than that. Such a bill that aims at controlling women’s freedom to choose--in a supervisory manner exploiting institutionally framed legal and ethical terms—actually throttles women’s freedom.

If only the legislators could wake up to realize that women’s freedoms are indeed human freedoms, such a bill would not have been envisaged, let alone passed.

Detailed story follows:

S.C. House: View fetal image prior to abortion Bill would mandate that women see ultrasound before terminating pregnancy By AARON GOULD SHEININ

Women seeking abortions would have to see a fetal ultrasound before the procedure under a bill given key approval in the S.C. House Wednesday.

After three hours of passionate debate, the House voted 91-23 to require women to sign a statement swearing they had seen an ultrasound image of their fetus before getting an abortion.

A half-dozen other states offer ultrasound images to abortion patients, legislative staffers said. But those states do not require abortion patients view them.

Supporters of the measure hope that image will spur more women to forgo abortion. Opponents called the bill “emotional blackmail.”

Third and final approval of the bill in the House could come as early as today, sending the bill to the Senate. There, the proposal faces stiffer opposition; individual senators hold great power to delay or derail legislation.

Abortion foes celebrated Wednesday’s vote.

“It was better than I expected,” Rep. Greg Delleney, R-Chester, said after he and other lawmakers, mostly Republicans, beat back a series of amendments from Democrats.

“Many of the pro-life groups contacted people around the state, and people were praying about this. Hundreds, if not thousands, were praying for it.”

Debate was impassioned.

Rep. Todd Rutherford, D-Richland, railed against Republicans for opposing his amendment to exempt victims of rape and incest from the required ultrasound viewing.

Forcing a victim of a crime to see the results is tantamount to forcing her to relive the ordeal, Rutherford said. “You all are doing it to her once again.”

But Delleney said the fetus is no less precious.

Rep. Bob Leach, R-Greenville, accused Rutherford of manufactured indignity. “I’ll be nominating you for actor of the year,” Leach said.

When Rutherford raised his voice in response, Speaker Pro Tem Doug Smith, R-Spartanburg, had to quiet both men and remind them to debate with civility.

Rep. Cathy Harvin, D-Clarendon, said the 111 men in the 124-member House never could understand the dueling emotions the issue raises.

“There are 111 of you in this body who will never be able to know the joy a woman experiences when she discovers she is with child,” Harvin said. “There are 111 of you who will never know the horror, that experience, that horror of being impregnated when it’s not something they desire, and then be taken and forced to observe the evidence of the crime.”

Theology, Scripture and wrenching personal stories poured from the podium through much of the debate.

Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter, D-Orangeburg, quoted the book of Micah to bolster her argument against the bill.

“What does the Lord require of you but to do justice?” Cobb-Hunter quoted. “Love kindness and walk humbly with your God.”

Abortion-rights opponents used the same sentiment later Wednesday to suggest the bill is a mistake. In a news release after the bill passed, the Columbia Christians for Life said the bill “may reduce abortions, but it will also prolong the practice of ‘legalized’ abortion.”

“God’s requirement in the case of murder is justice, not regulation,” the release said.

"Violence against women has yet to receive the priority attention and resources needed at all levels to tackle it with the seriousness and visibility necessary."

UN Secretary-General’s in-depth study on violence against women (2006) (A/61/122/Add.1)

Before we reach another consensus on violence against women, let us examine the existing differences. For, whereas it is far easier (because it is pacifying) to share the knowledge that violence against women continues to exist, it is rather discomforting (because it is agitating) to throw lights on why it is so.

Like every year, academic and administrative reports of all kinds will be generated to commemorate March 8. After all, since we have a non-profit United Nations and we have corporate profiteers, we will eventually need to reach a consensus on issues such as violence against women. And amidst the thousands of articles and hundreds of televised tear-jerkers we will encounter in the coming month, the information overload would have done the damage, if we do not stay alert about few conditions that need addressing:

1. Suspect the Messengers: The kinds of messages about women may be misgivings. Indeed, most channels that provide news about women’s progress and violence are owned and controlled by men. Whereas it is undoubtedly true that many men are truly understanding of their gender positions and many women are too willing to play the assigned roles, it is still wise to suspect the men in the month of IWD message boards.

2. Women’s Rights are Universal Rights: Some will talk about women’s rights as a domain that applies to women only. Indeed, women’s rights are women’s prerogative only as a practice, but everyone’s concern as a scope. Just like they fool us by writing different history books for African-Americans, and the Americans as though American history does not include the minorities, it is highly suspect that women’s rights are not matter of concern for men.

3. Workplace for women vs Women for workplace: Most arguments about women’s rights focus on necessities to prepare the women for the workplace. Its like Amartya Sen saying that the question should not be if democracy is good for a country, but it should be directed towards making the country good for a democracy. Well, frankly speaking, he could be wrong. Just as JFK was while demanding that people give to the country without asking what the country can do for them. That’s the populist tone. The reality is women don’t need to be prepared for workplace. Workplaces need to be geared to serve women.

4. International Woman has a meaning: It means, women identify with each other across different boundaries. This identification has an undertone: that is, they accept the differences across cultures. To be truly international means understanding that there are differences across nations, and hence across women from different nations. There is no place for homogenization of women as one entity. So yes, White women are different from Black women are different from Asian women are different from Latina women are different from Muslim women are different from Hindu women are different from Swahili-speaking women who are different from Greek women. Women have different social locations among themselves, and hence understanding them holds the key. Let no one lead us into an essentialist notion of women’s problem. Different women face oppressions of different nature. The similarity is the most striking: that women are oppressed simply because they are women.

5. Are women human?: MacKinnon’s question is still valid. No amount of cultural excuses (from first world pornography to third world dowry) makes all women full human today. Ruling classes of the world still consider women as accessories to either their power ladder, or to their social justice tokenism. Their domestic adornment or cheap working class market value. Their television anchoring revenue system or their make-up kit industry. Just as Aishwarya Rai cannot be allowed to cry in public because Revlon will probably run into losses, Tamara MaidenName cannot challenge her greedy boss for uneven wages because he will merely retaliate.

International Women’s Day must not be allowed to promote card and gifts companies to indulge in exhibitionism of annual love to the mothers and sisters and wives and friends. It is rather a day to remind all of us in the world that a separate battle is on. This one is a battle of all. A battle that is waged by the true majority of the world, the women. A battle, that addresses the core inconsistencies of capitalism.

How aware are the liberals when it comes to queer culture? Alternet takes a stab.

Queer 101: A Guide for Heteros By Cameron Scott, AlterNet. As last November's election neared and a Democratic victory appeared more and more likely, Republicans warned that Speaker Pelosi would impose her "San Francisco values" on average Americans. Americans to the right of the left coast felt in their gut that San Francisco values were a shameful thing, without really knowing what they were.

Even San Franciscans scratched their heads a bit. The local paper's sex columnist, Violet Blue, pointed out that it meant sex. She argued that the twist in conservatives' panties resulted from San Franciscans' sex-positive outlook. Blue offered a paean to some of the city's sexual rituals, several of which, such as the Folsom Street Fair, are primarily gay.

But even Violet Blue didn't tell the whole truth: The phrase "San Francisco values" came directly from the right's well-worn gay-baiting playbook. In a story called "San Francisco Values Front and Center," the right's faithful warrior Bill O'Reilly shifts from talking about the city's ousting of ROTC clubs from several high schools into a discussion of gay marriage. He includes standard playbook comparisons of gay unions to polygamy, "triads" and incest.

So why hasn't anybody called a spade a spade? Many in Middle America have come to believe homosexual values must be abhorrent, based on the right's insistence that all homosexuals are radical perverts.

Blindness to difference has allowed the right wing to invent a sinister stereotype of "homosexuals" that has only tenuous links to reality. Radical right groups generate bogus statistics by conflating gay men and lesbians (the claim that homosexuals are more likely to have STDs should more accurately say that lesbians have the lowest rates of STDs of any group) and gay men and men who molest boys (imagine if they consistently referred to men who molest girls as "straight men"). The right gets away with their smears because they have persuaded Americans that sex and desire have no role in polite society.

Continue reading "Queer 101 for the Liberals" »

Taking yet another lead on creating a safer space, New Jersey state has a progressive ruling on school sex harassment scenario.

N.J. High Court Applies Hostile Work Environment Standard to School Sex Harassment
Henry Gottlieb
New Jersey Law Journal

School districts can be held liable in damages for student-on-student gay bashing and other forms of sexual harassment if teachers know about it and fail to react promptly, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled last week.

At the same time, the court declined to impose strict liability. Instead, liability will depend on how well educators respond to such situations.

"When a student is subjected to severe or pervasive bullying on the school bus, in the classroom, or at the playground and a school district fails to adequately respond to that misconduct, that student has a right to redress," Chief Justice James Zazzali wrote for the unanimous court in L.W. v. Toms River Regional Schools, A-111. "However, school districts will be shielded from liability, when their preventive and remedial actions are reasonable in light of the totality of the circumstances."

The plaintiff was a Toms River, N.J., student who complained to authorities in grammar, middle and high school that his peers abused him for years with anti-gay comments like "homo" and "faggot" and occasionally assaulted him -- treatment so bad that he felt compelled to miss classes and avoid school buses and after-school activities.

Administrators tried to deal with the problem with lectures, detentions and an occasional suspension to tormentors without effecting an end to the problem until the plaintiff transferred to an out-of-town school.

In response to a suit, the state Division on Civil Rights found that the Law Against Discrimination covered the case and it imposed $60,000 in fines on the school district.

The state Supreme Court agreed that the case was covered by the LAD and the leading case on hostile work environment sexual harassment, Lehmann v. Toys 'R' Us, Inc., 132 N.J.587.

The LAD permits a cause of action against a school district for student-on-student harassment based on an individual's perceived sexual orientation if the school district fails to reasonably address that harassment, the court said.

Continue reading "NJ Court rules against hostile schools" »

Just how difficult it is to be a mom in a postfeminist era? Or are the mothers going to redefine the movement now? New York Times probes into the new shift.

By KARA JESELLA

A BABY was passed around like the hors d’oeuvres — in this case, bruschetta, a fruit plate — among the 10 mothers who crowded into Ann Clark’s Sacramento home on a Tuesday night this month. No matter if the baby was crying; this was a child-friendly crowd.

The mothers all held jobs outside the home (pastry chef, singer in a band, lawyer, hairstylist, nanny) and many had flexible schedules to make it easier to care for their children. Like hundreds of others who have gathered over the last nine months, they huddled around a television to view “The Motherhood Manifesto,” a documentary about the obstacles still facing working mothers, including many of those in the room.

“I’m home with a 2-year-old, so there may be an interruption,” said Ms. Clark, 35, a social worker with two children and a three-day-a-week office job, as she recounted the viewing party the next day and talked about how she related to the mothers in the movie. Like them, she said, her financial situation felt precarious. She wasn’t sure she could count on keeping her part-time position next fall.

“These are issues I’m aware of and feel strongly about,” she said of the movie’s focus on subjects like universal child care, maternity and paternity leave, and workplace discrimination against mothers. That is why she joined MomsRising.org, the mother’s advocacy organization that made the documentary. “It’s a great opportunity to connect with friends — mothers — and together have a chance to change things,” she said.

For years, mothers have been taking to the Internet to blog or post messages about the travails of motherhood, commiserating, fuming or laughing about their shared lives. But in the last year there has been a marked increase in those who are going beyond simply expressing their feelings. In a throwback to their mothers’ — or was it their grandmothers’? — time, they are organizing about family and work issues.

A generation of mothers who are largely perceived as postfeminist in every way, from sex to economic discrimination, has begun a consciousness-raising that is almost old-fashioned were it not for the technology involved. Raised to believe that girls could accomplish anything, these women have reached parenthood, only to find they faced many of the same pay, equity and work-family balance issues that were being fought over decades before. From that awakening, they say, has come the inkling of a new movement.

Continue reading "Moms Rising: A new feminist shift" »

Connecticut lawmakers are considering a bill prohibiting transgender discrimination.

(Hartford-AP) State lawmakers are again considering a bill that would prohibit discrimination based on gender identity.

One transgendered woman told the legislature's Judiciary Committee of how she struggled to find a job, despite having a PhD in chemistry. Time after time, she would apply for jobs, only to be turned down after the interview.

The bill adds gender identity or expression to the law that prohibits discrimination based on race, gender, religion, age and other characteristics.

Although the same legislation passed in the Judiciary Committee last year, it died later in the legislative process. Advocates hope this will be the year that the bill finally passes.

Three years ago, the state's hate crime law was expanded to protect transgendered people, who identify and express themselves as the opposite sex.

A uniquely inspiring narration about the travel from the "world of religion" to the "world of reason", Infidel has been reviewed by NY Times. The book written by Ayaan Hirsi Ali is poised to receive the kind of attention that Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran did. If Nafisi found inspiration in Austen and Nabakov to write about women plights in Iran, Hirsi Ali took cue from Nancy Drew mysteries to sketch emancipation of Muslim women from Somalia to Netherlands. Worth a read. At least William Grimes recommends it highly.

No Rest for a Feminist Fighting Radical Islam By WILLIAM GRIMES

Ayaan Hirsi Ali came to the attention of the wider world in an extraordinary way. In 2004 a Muslim fanatic, after shooting the filmmaker Theo van Gogh dead on an Amsterdam street, pinned a letter to Mr. van Gogh’s chest with a knife. Addressed to Ms. Hirsi Ali, the letter called for holy war against the West and, more specifically, for her death.

A Somali by birth and a recently elected member of the Dutch Parliament, Ms. Hirsi Ali had waged a personal crusade to improve the lot of Muslim women. Her warnings about the dangers posed to the Netherlands by unassimilated Muslims made her Public Enemy No. 1 for Muslim extremists, a feminist counterpart to Salman Rushdie.

The circuitous, violence-filled path that led Ms. Hirsi Ali from Somalia to the Netherlands is the subject of “Infidel,” her brave, inspiring and beautifully written memoir. Narrated in clear, vigorous prose, it traces the author’s geographical journey from Mogadishu to Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia and Kenya, and her desperate flight to the Netherlands to escape an arranged marriage.

At the same time, Ms. Hirsi Ali describes a journey “from the world of faith to the world of reason,” a long, often bitter struggle to come to terms with her religion and the clan-based traditional society that defined her world and that of millions of Muslims all over.

Ms. Hirsi Ali, now 37, belongs to the Osman Mahamud subclan of the Darod clan. Its members, by tradition, are born to rule, which may explain the author’s self-possessed, imperious gaze on the cover of her book. Her mother came from a family of nomads, and Ms. Hirsi Ali grew up listening to desert folk tales narrated by her grandmother, who, like many Somalis, followed a “diluted, relaxed” version of Islam that included traditional magic spirits and genies. It also required that young girls undergo genital mutilation, which Ms. Hirsi Ali, a victim of the practice, describes in horrific detail.

Somalia’s troubled politics provided Ms. Hirsi Ali with an eventful childhood. Her father, an opponent of the country’s Soviet-backed dictator, spent years in prison. The family, living on clan charity, moved to Saudi Arabia, where Ms. Hirsi Ali recoiled at the local interpretation of Islam, and later to Ethiopia and Kenya, where Ms. Hirsi Ali added Swahili and English to her growing list of languages. Without knowing it, she was becoming a permanent outsider, a misfit wherever she traveled.

Continue reading "Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Journy of an Infidel " »

Purdue students perform 'Vagina Monologues' to benefit YWCA domestic violence prevention program

Provocative, controversial, emotional and hilarious -- all can be used to describe Eve Ensler's critically acclaimed play The Vagina Monologues.

For women in Greater Lafayette, the play can be described as a lifesaver, too.

For the past five years, Purdue University students have organized productions of The Vagina Monologues on campus. Proceeds of the almost-always sold-out shows have gone to Greater Lafayette's YWCA Domestic Violence Intervention and Prevention Program. In the past two years, the YWCA received about $20,000 from Purdue's productions.

"The money goes to the women's shelter," said Nohemi Lugo, Hispanic advocate in the domestic violence program. "The money provides women with food, clothing and legal issues like child custody and divorce. It also goes to our staff, support groups and reflections groups, parenting classes and anger management classes."

The 2007 Purdue edition of The Vagina Monologues will be at 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 6 p.m. Feb. 11 at Loeb Playhouse inside Purdue's Stewart Center.

This production of The Vagina Monologues is the first at the 1,000-seat Loeb Playhouse. The play started out in the small Matthews Hall, Room 215, for three years before moving on to the large lecture hall in the Class of 1950 building. Sold-out shows and lackluster acoustics have brought the play to its largest venue yet.

Leslie Foutz, a junior studying English, was one of the thousands who caught The Vagina Monologues in the Class of 1950 building. The show and Ensler's words resulted in her participation this year. Foutz said The Vagina Monologues is presented in a fun, entertaining manner while it touches on serious, emotional topics such as domestic violence, rape, torture and other grievous human rights violations toward women around the world.

"You're crying and laughing at the same show," Foutz said.

Foutz is one of 21 women who will perform in this year's show. The number of actresses has been around 20 for the last few years, said director Kelly George, a senior majoring in psychology and women's studies.

What started as a one-woman show by Ensler in 1996 quickly grew to small productions featuring three women usually dressed in black and sitting on stools. By 1998, Ensler created the V-Day celebration and allowed her play to be performed to benefit non-profit organizations. The playwright made her work more inclusive with much larger casts.

"Everyone who wants to be in the play, can," George said.

With 23 monologues in the play, most performers will do one monologue each, George said. The women are standing behind one of three microphones. The pieces are memorized or on notecards. Some works are "choral" and utilize the voices of multiple actresses. The core monologues including "I Was Twelve, My Mother Slapped Me," "I Was There in the Room," and "Because He Liked to Look At It" are the same each year, but many of the pieces are revised annually. There are several "optional" monologues and a brand new one called "2007 Spotlight Monologue." The new work speaks on the 2007 V-Day theme of "Reclaiming Peace."

"With so much conflict going on around the world, especially with America and Iraq, women are being greatly affected in combat zones," George said. "The monologue talks about the correlation of violence in the street leading to violence in the home."

George and her cast hope for a large and diverse audience. They believe women and men will be enlightened by the topics in the play.

"Everyone benefits from this show. I have no problem asking my students to go," said Adryan Glasgow, a post-colonial literature graduate student and four-time cast member.

The YWCA will benefit financially from the show. Lugo is impressed and thankful of the Purdue students' efforts.

"I think it's awesome that they're doing this," she said. "It speaks a lot about the youth and it's great they're helping us out and believing in our cause."

In her column “Broadly Speaking”, Adda Birnir compares sexism with racism in an instructive manner, while making the intersections appear as relevant as they actually are:

Sexual harassment is tricky because of three considerations: the nature of the activity, whether the action is welcome and, most importantly, the context. Noam Rudnick, writing for the Hippolytic blog, compared Schlessinger’s actions to instances of unwanted sexual advances perpetrated on a female undergraduate by a male undergraduate at Toad’s Place. But unwanted sexual advances and sexual harassment are not the same. A guy inappropriately grabbing a girl at Toad’s is not an example of sexual harassment because Toad’s is a social space where it is reasonable and expected that people are making sexual advances toward one another. Because of its context, such an action is harassment of a sexual nature, not sexual harassment.

Basha Rubin, writing for the Broad Recognition blog, countered Rudnick’s comments by saying that it does a disservice to women in the workplace to compare Schlessinger’s actions to sexual advances at a nightclub, because it gives credence to the idea that a male boss who sexually harasses a female employee is simply incapable of controlling his sexual desire. The workplace is not a space where it is typically appropriate to express one’s sexual interest. For this reason, harassment at the workplace is critically different from harassment at Toad’s.

So if sexual harassment is based on a drive for power, why does it so often take a sexual form? I find that comparing sexism to racism is instructive because it allows for a case study in which sexual desire is not a factor. To answer this question, I would like to compare these instances of sexual harassment to the Michael Richards case. This past November, Richards, who played Kramer on “Seinfeld,” gained notoriety for shouting racist slurs at audience members during a stand-up comedy performance. Apparently frustrated by what he deemed to be rude interruptions by a group of black male audience members, Richards stopped his act to yell angrily at the men, calling them all sorts of names, including the N-word.

Continue reading "Sexism’s power struggle mirrors historical racism" »

Goodyear Tire company has settled a gender discrimination case.

Goodyear Tire Company agreed to a $925,000 settlement to be disbursed among some 800 women who were not hired for entry-level, tire-building jobs at the company’s plant in Danville, Virginia. The lawsuit, which was filed by the US Department of Labor on behalf of the complainants, alleged that the company practiced gender-discriminatory hiring from January 1998 to June 1999.

Because Goodyear is a federal contractor and therefore prohibited from discriminating on the basis of race, color, religion, gender, or national origin, the Department of Labor brought the case against the company. Charles E. James Sr., deputy assistant labor secretary for the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, said the settlement serves to put "federal contractors on notice that the Labor Department is serious about eliminating systemic discrimination," Women's eNews reports.

In addition to the settlement sum, Goodyear will also offer entry-level jobs to as many as 60 women who meet the company's employment requirements, the Beacon Journal reports.

The Supreme Court is currently reviewing a second gender-discrimination lawsuit against Goodyear Tire Company, in which the plaintiff allegedly worked for the company for 19 years for a salary that was significantly less than that of her male counterparts who had the same or less experience.

Opulence of wealth has truly married the filth of mind in an extravaganza that ridicules the last remnants of decency in our vulgar capitalism. As a result, even the age-old diplomacy that shrouded the despicable aspects of money market has given way to a new exhibitionist class society, and to that effect, New York Magazine has begun to celebrate classism and sexism.

An event titled “Natural Selection Speed Date—Rich Guys and Hot Girls” is being organized by Pocket Change and New York Magazine. Scheduled for February 7th, this Darwinian slip unashamedly declares that “Women want money in a man, men want beauty in a woman – this is a factual force of nature.”

Yes, you read it right. The Pocket Change event goes on to celebrate what it finds desirable, in its own words: “This genetic cleansing is how the wealthy stay beautiful.” Not only the event not finds such “genetic cleansing” criminal by intent and design, but it also decides to rejoice over the sordid class difference to commemorate the wealthy men, and their prize catches.

New York Magazine/Pocket Change may have found this beautiful and desirable, but we are sure for millions of sensible people, this is outright ugly, hideous and mocking. What’s worse, such an event is sexist to its core and inhuman in its essence.

In conversation with Womensrightsblog, a Pocket Change newsletter subscriber Patricia Delhannon reverberated the views of most readers that were suppressed by mainstream publications such as New York Magazine in the due course of their decision to go ahead with such an event:

"I am personally a realistic woman, I recognize gender differences and I have never really called myself a feminist. I do however believe in the strength of women and (find) this is offensive and I feel offended as a woman. I'm not really experienced at any type of social action, but thought at least something should be done. I think as women, we can't support this or even allow this type of thing to take place.”

The leading precept of this event is that men who will enter into this exclusive contest will be solely judged by their wealth. Each must have all the following properties: a minimum of half a million earning, with invested assets of more than 1 million and trust money worth more than 4 million dollars.

What happens to women who want to enter the contest? Do they also need to be “successful”? Hell no. They are not expected to be working. They should only be rich in their “beauty”, which will be judged by celebrity matchmaker Janis Spindel.

So we are back in the ages where men are supposed to earn and women to be their slaves. Precisely, going by this “Natural Selection” event that will judge the “Rich Guys and Hot Girls”.

Readers of such media are bound to get shocked in a city that witnesses deaths due to winter, homelessness and lack of health coverage. But are the media any more bothered? Hardly, saving a few.

Faking Good Breeding has covered the story. So has Sex and The Upper East Side. And finally, Feministing has a compelling note.

But that’s mostly about it. Have we just been rendered less sensitive or are we choosing to get less educated? Jack Tuckner of Tuckner, Sipser, Weinstock & Sipser, LLP, says:

“Ideally, our corporate media should find interest in running this sordid story, and that would be wonderful; but decisions are often made to run stories for their own pecuniary reasons that have nothing to do with its newsworthiness or utility. This is the world of Girls Gone Wild shown increasingly on network television. This is the world where a nanosecond of Janet Jackson's breast is considered scandalous but Viagra advertisements depicting men staring lasciviously at women's lingerie are shown during the same Super Bowl presentation with nary a whimper of protest.”

A reflective piece on Sunday Washinton Post:
What's Lost in Prenatal Testing
Why Encourage Testing for Down Syndrome

By Patricia E. Bauer
Sunday, January 14, 2007; Page B07

She was a fresh-faced young woman with a couple of adorable kids, whiling away an hour in the sandbox at the park near my home. So was I, or so I thought. New in town, I had come to the park in hopes of finding some friends for myself and my little ones.

Her eyes flicked over to where my daughter sat, shovel gripped in a tiny fist, and then traveled quickly away. The remark that followed was directed to the woman next to her, but her voice carried clearly across the playground. "Isn't it a shame," she said, an eyebrow cocked in Margaret's direction, "that everyone doesn't get amnio?"

It's been more than 20 years, but I saw the face of that woman again when I read about the recommendation from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) this month that all pregnant women get prenatal screening for Down syndrome. I worry that universal screening brings us all closer to being like that woman at the sandbox -- uninformed, judgmental and unable to entertain the possibility that people with disabilities have something to offer.

Continue reading "What's Lost in Prenatal Testing" »

Finally, some good words to contain the Fascist Standards of Beauty. Health guidelines have been suggested for models to that effect. Eric Wilson of New York Times has a detailed story.

The fashion industry sells modish trapeze dresses and $800 platform ankle boots. But it also sells women an ideal of beauty embodied by the models who walk the runways and appear in fashion magazines.

And since the fall, American designers have been under increasing pressure to respond to a wave of dangerously thin models who have set the aesthetic standards of global fashion.

Now the industry has decided to issue guidelines to designers, aimed at promoting healthier behavior among its highly paid clothes hangers.

The guidelines, which fall short of modeling restrictions announced in recent months by fashion show organizers in Madrid and Milan, were introduced yesterday at a meeting of the Council of Fashion Designers of America in Manhattan. But the group’s recommendations, which will be sent to designers next week in anticipation of the fall fashion shows that begin in New York on Feb. 2, seem unlikely to satisfy many critics of fashion’s embrace of ultra-thinness.

According to participants at the meeting, the recommendations are likely to include scheduling fashion-show fittings with younger models during daylight hours, rather than late at night, to help them get more sleep; urging designers to identify models with eating disorders; and introducing more nutritious backstage catering, where a diet of Champagne and cigarettes is the norm.

Continue reading "Health Guidelines Suggested for Models" »

New York Times has an article on the difficulties of being a woman in the business of construction. Things sure seem to be changing, but not much better than they historically have been.

One Degree in Fine Arts, and One in Plumbing
By JOSEPH P. FRIED

WHEN Elaine Ward became an apprentice plumber in 1986, the only female plumber most Americans had ever seen was Josephine the Plumber, a character in 1960s and ’70s commercials for Comet cleanser.

But Ms. Ward’s choice of a vocation wasn’t the only thing that made her unusual. After all, how many plumbers of either sex have a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree?

Today, Ms. Ward remains anomalous. She is still one of a small number of women who work as plumbers in New York City; one of an even smaller number of women who own plumbing businesses in the city; and, according to the Buildings Department, one of very few women licensed by the city as master plumbers.

That rank, held by about 1,400 plumbers, and achieved in part on the basis of a city-administered written and practical test, exceeds the journeywoman status that Ms. Ward worked under for a decade before starting her company in 2001. For a plumbing contracting business in the city to operate legally, at least 51 percent of it must be owned by one or more licensed master plumbers.

Continue reading "Women plumbers: More distress than progress" »

New York Times continues its discussions on gender inequality series. Latest is about the stagnation in pay gap.

Gender Pay Gap, Once Narrowing, Is Stuck in Place
By DAVID LEONHARDT

Throughout the 1980s and early '90s, women of all economic levels — poor, middle class and rich — were steadily gaining ground on their male counterparts in the work force. By the mid-'90s, women earned more than 75 cents for every dollar in hourly pay that men did, up from 65 cents just 15 years earlier.

Largely without notice, however, one big group of women has stopped making progress: those with a four-year college degree. The gap between their pay and the pay of male college graduates has actually widened slightly since the mid-'90s.

For women without a college education, the pay gap with men has narrowed only slightly over the same span.

These trends suggest that all the recent high-profile achievements — the first female secretary of state, the first female lead anchor of a nightly newscast, the first female president of Princeton, and, next month, the first female speaker of the House — do not reflect what is happening to most women, researchers say.

A decade ago, it was possible to imagine that men and women with similar qualifications might one day soon be making nearly identical salaries. Today, that is far harder to envision.

"Nothing happened to the pay gap from the mid-1950s to the late '70s," said Francine D. Blau, an economist at Cornell and a leading researcher of gender and pay. "Then the '80s stood out as a period of sharp increases in women's pay. And it's much less impressive after that."

Continue reading "Gender and Pay Gap in America" »

Studies show that research supports are provided less to women scientists than their male counterparts. In addition, qualitative growth of women in academia has not been significant in proportion to their numerical presence.

New York Times today has an article about women in science:

Women in Science: The Battle Moves to the Trenches
By CORNELIA DEAN

HOUSTON — Since the 1970s, women have surged into science and engineering classes in larger and larger numbers, even at top-tier institutions like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where half the undergraduate science majors and more than a third of the engineering students are women. Half of the nation’s medical students are women, and for decades the numbers have been rising similarly in disciplines like biology and mathematics.

Yet studies show that women in science still routinely receive less research support than their male colleagues, and they have not reached the top academic ranks in numbers anything like their growing presence would suggest.

For example, at top-tier institutions only about 15 percent of full professors in social, behavioral or life sciences are women, “and these are the only fields in science and engineering where the proportion of women reaches into the double digits,” an expert panel convened by the National Academy of Sciences reported in September. And at each step on the academic ladder, more women than men leave science and engineering.

So in government agencies, at scientific organizations and on university campuses, female scientists are asking why, and wondering what they can do about it. The Association for Women in Science, the National Science Foundation and the National Research Council are among the groups tackling these issues. In just the past two months, conferences have been held at Columbia University and the City University of New York graduate center. Harvard has a yearlong lecture series on “Women, Science and Society.”

This fall, female scientists at Rice University here gathered promising women who are graduate students and postdoctoral fellows to help them learn skills that they will need to deal with the perils of job hunting, promotion and tenure in high-stakes academic science.

“The reality is there are barriers that women face,” said Kathleen S. Matthews, the dean of natural sciences at Rice, who spoke at the meeting’s opening dinner. “There are circles and communities of engagement where women are by and large not included.”

Organizers of these events dismiss the idea voiced in 2005 by Lawrence H. Summers, then president of Harvard, that women over all are handicapped as scientists because as a group they are somehow innately deficient in mathematics. The organizers point to ample evidence that any performance gap between men and women is changeable and is shrinking to the vanishing point.

Instead, they talk about what they have to know and do to get ahead. They talk about unspoken, even unconscious sexism that means they must be better than men to be thought as good — that they must, as one Rice participant put it, literally and figuratively wear a suit and heels, while men can relax in jeans.

They muse on the importance of mentoring and other professional support and talk about ways women can provide it for each other if they do not receive it from their professors or advisers.

And they obsess about what they call “the two body problem,” the extreme difficulty of reconciling a demanding career in science with marriage and a family — especially, as is more often the case for women than men in science, when the spouse also has scientific ambitions.

Continue reading "Women in Science: Structural Disparity" »

The dominant view that women will just need to be in the business for few years for them to attain power parity is entirely flawed. Even after three decades of women in business, and despite a significant number of women MBAs from top B-schools, the status has not changed much. Women sure haven’t come a long way…

And that’s possibly because of a multitude of factors. But so far as the Fortune 500 companies are concerned, that’s also owing to the protectionist sexism that guards the old male power corridors tight. Julie Creswell of New York Times writes about “a dearth of female bosses”:

LIKE so many other women who entered corporate America in the 1970s, Carol Bartz simply wanted to make a little money. She did not harbor secret desires to run her own company or become chief executive of a large corporation. She just wanted to do a good job.

After working her way through college at the University of Wisconsin in Madison as a cocktail waitress (required uniform: red miniskirt, black fishnets and red feather in hair), Ms. Bartz graduated with a computer science degree in 1971. Tall, blonde, boisterous and ambitious, she entered the work force at a time when the promise of new professional opportunities for women was in the air.

What Ms. Bartz says she discovered, however, was that male counterparts and supervisors shook the corporate ladder ever more fiercely with each rung that she and other pioneering women of her generation ascended. But by combining a first-rate mind with hard work and decisive career moves, she managed to duck, bob and weave her way through Silicon Valley’s male-dominated technology industry in the 1980s.

By the early 1990s, Ms. Bartz had become one of the first women to run a large corporation. She garnered accolades from Wall Street and her peers for turning Autodesk into a leading international software company. This spring, Ms. Bartz stepped down as Autodesk’s chief executive, but she remains the executive chairwoman of its board.

Despite her hard-won reputation as an astute businesswoman, Ms. Bartz found herself repeatedly skipped over during a recent meeting of business and political leaders in Washington. The reason was that the men at the table assumed that she was an office assistant, not a fellow executive. “Happens all of the time,” Ms. Bartz says dryly, recalling the incident. “Sometimes I stand up. Sometimes I just ignore it.”

The contours of her long, bumpy journey to the chief executive’s suite reflect some of the gains women have made in navigating corporate hierarchies over the last 30 years, but also illustrate how rare it still is for a woman to get the keys to a company’s most powerful corner office. For decades, the pat explanation was that women simply had not been in the work force long enough; with patience, the pipeline would fill.

A look at the pipeline suggests otherwise. While top business schools are churning out an increasing number of female M.B.A.’s, only about 16 percent of corporate officers at Fortune 500 companies are women, according to Catalyst, an organization that studies women in the workplace. The numbers are even sparer at the top of the pyramid: women fill only nine, or less than 2 percent, of the chief executive jobs at Fortune 500 companies.

“There have been women in the pipeline for 20 to 25 years; progress has been slower than anybody thought it ever would be,” laments Julie H. Daum, the North American board practice leader for Spencer Stuart, the executive search firm. She says she does not expect the situation to change anytime soon. “It’s not as if we’re in the beginning of something that’s going to explode and that there are going to be lots of women in the c-suite,” she said. “I think we’re still way far removed from where we should be and from where women would like to be.”

No one disputes that more women have highly visible roles as chief executives. During the past year alone, several women joined the ultra-exclusive C.E.O. club, taking the reins at large, prominent Fortune 500 companies. In June, Irene B. Rosenfeld was named the chief executive of Kraft Foods, a job that once eluded her earlier in her career at Kraft; she joined a competitor before she returned to the company. Two months earlier, Patricia A. Woertz jumped from the Chevron Corporation to become chief executive at the chemical giant Archer Daniels Midland. Those two anointments were followed by Indra Nooyi’s ascent to the top seat at PepsiCo.

Even so, those women remain statistical anomalies. And the complex question of why women remain so underrepresented in the corporate suite yields a variety of possible answers. A number of women leave their careers — sometimes by choice, sometimes not — to focus on rearing families. The remaining pool suffers from a lack of networking or mentoring programs, others contend.

Continue reading "Female Bosses: The Struggle So far in Vain" »

Dr. Jillian Todd Weiss has five concerns regarding the new NJ Law:

I am concerned that "transgender" may not retain its positive, non-derogatory meaning. In an example from the transgender context, in the early 1980s, Seattle passed a trans-inclusive nondiscrimination law using the broad term (they thought): transvestite. This term has since taken a negative and more limited connotation, causing the Seattle City Council to need to revise its nondiscrimination law only about twenty years later. Terms from other contexts involving groups of people who experience discrimination that demonstrate my concern about popular terminology acquiring a negative connotation include "colored people" and "handicapped." "Transgender" may not always have a positive connotation and may
fall out of favor.

The second concern is that the bill, before the amendment, utilized the best approach for discrimination protections: it used terminology that covers all people, rather than a specific, protected group of people. American non-discrimination laws are generally framed to prohibit discrimination on the basis of certain characteristics, like sex or race, not specific examples of people within those categories, like women or African-Americans. Just as it was unnecessary and would have been inadvisable to add "Race includes black status" to race discrimination laws, this "transgender status" clarifying amendment could unintentionally have a limiting or confusing effect on interpretations of the law. Adding just this one group-based identity to the bill’s language makes the bill conceptually incoherent and inconsistent with similar laws; either problem could negatively affect the interpretation of its provisions.

Our third concern is that this language is out-of-step with other laws protecting transgender and gender non-conforming people from discrimination. Eight states have passed similar laws, and none of them use the term "transgender people" or any similar term. No other state legislature, administrative agency or court has found that this type of clarifying amendment was necessary, nor has there been confusion that transgender people are not covered by these laws. Also, in drafting the federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which is expected to be introduced this Spring, the LGBT attorneys involved in drafting, including myself, specifically rejected using the term "transgender" for many of the reasons covered in this letter. For consistency throughout the nation, and for New Jersey to be in-step with the federal bill that will eventually become law, it is best that New Jersey use relatively similar language. With similar language throughout the U.S., courts can utilize each other’s interpretations to develop a common case law that all jurisdictions can draw upon. For your reference, the definitional language of the eight states is attached as an Appendix.

Our fourth concern is about the term "status." How it would be interpreted in this context is unclear. Would transgender people have to prove that they have achieved "status?" Would someone in the early stages of transition (often when discrimination occurs) qualify as having attained that status? "Status" implies a fixity that does not capture or address the reality of discrimination against transgender people.

Our fifth concern is not about New Jersey's interpretations, but is about future interpretations of other state and federal laws. Including this term in New Jersey's law could cast doubt on what is covered by laws in other jurisdictions that do not include such language. It could beg the question, are transgender people not covered if the law only includes "gender identity or expression?" From a national perspective, the language used in New Jersey could influence other jurisdictions to either adopt the same language (cause for concern by itself for the above-mentioned reasons) and/or could negatively affect the interpretation of similar laws that lack New Jersey's additional sentence.

A new United Nations act recognizes that women and girls with disabilities are often at greater risk, both within and outside the home of violence, injury or abuse, neglect or negligent treatment, maltreatment or exploitation.

"States Parties recognize that women and girls with disabilities are subject to multiple discrimination, and in this regard shall take measures to ensure the full and equal enjoyment by them of all human rights and fundamental freedoms.

States Parties shall take all appropriate measures to ensure the full development, advancement and empowerment of women, for the purpose of guaranteeing them the exercise and enjoyment of the human rights and fundamental freedoms set out in the present Convention."

Click here to access the Final report of the Ad Hoc Committee on a Comprehensive and Integral International Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Rights and Dignity of Persons with Disabilities.

UNFPA Welcomes Adoption of Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities:

UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, today welcomed the adoption by the world community of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities - the first global human rights treaty to elaborate the rights of disabled persons and to specifically mention the right to sexual and reproductive health. The Convention was adopted by consensus by the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday.

“This is an important step forward for the promotion and protection of human rights of persons with disabilities,” said UNFPA Executive Director, Thoraya Ahmed Obaid. The world’s 650 million disabled persons have suffered discrimination and neglect and this treaty paves the way for corrective action so that they can attain equal enjoyment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms. The international goal to achieve universal access to reproductive health by 2015 cannot be achieved unless persons with disabilities are brought into the mainstream and included in policies and programmes to improve sexual and reproductive health.

Historically, disabled persons have been marginalized, stigmatized and deprived of opportunities and freedoms. They have endured forced sterilization and forced abortion. Studies show that persons with disabilities are up to three times more likely to be victims of physical and sexual abuse, and are at increased risk of HIV/AIDS.

According to Article 25 of the landmark Convention, States Parties should, “Provide persons with disabilities with the same range, quality and standard of free or affordable health care and programs as provided to other persons, including in the area of sexual and reproductive health and population-based public health programs.”

The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is the first major human rights treaty of the 21st century. Following its ratification, countries introduce laws, policies and programs ensuring that disabled people are treated according to its provisions.

Continue reading "New Rights of Persons with Disabilities adoptions welcomed" »

In yet another instance of family responsibilities discrimination, a woman lawyer has filed a lawsuit against her law firm for being “treated differently by the firm after she had children.” She was asked to prepare the cases for trial for male attorneys while she suffered from low wages and benefits.

ABA Journal has the detailed report:

Lawyer Says She Was Shoved onto the Mommy Track
Lawsuit claims Pittsburgh law firm told her to spend more time with her kids

By G.M. Filisko

In what one expert says is a rising trend, a woman lawyer has sued her law firm for sexual discrimination alleging, among other things, that she was told she needed to spend less time at work and more with her family.

Alyson J. Kirleis filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania against her Pittsburgh-based employer. Kirleis v. Dickie, McCamey & Chilcote, No. 06 CV 1495 (Nov. 9).

"This lawsuit's a doozy," says Joan C. Williams, a professor who teaches employment law at the University of California Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco. Williams has studied cases filed by mothers against employers based on what she calls "family responsibilities discrimination," and she says the number of cases is increasing.

"There’s been a 40 percent increase in this type of case in the past 10 years," Williams says. "We’ve documented more than 800 lawsuits based on family responsibility against employers in general, and we’ve found 32 other lawsuits of this type against legal employers. Of those 32, it’s a mix of attorneys and staff, but most of the cases have been filed by attorneys."

"It certainly looks as if [family responsibility] cases are the new face of discrimination law based on the fact that they're growing so rapidly, when employment discrimination cases have fallen 23 percent, based on our research," Williams says.

But Diana J. Veilleux says, "I don’t know that I’ve seen an increase in these types of cases." Veilleux is a Washington, D.C.-based lawyer who represents both individuals who bring employment cases and government agencies that must defend employment cases. "But they’re probably being taken more seriously than they used to be taken."

Kirleis joined Dickie, McCamey & Chilcote as an associate in 1988 and eventually became a shareholder. According to the firm’s Web site, Kirleis handles medical-malpractice cases in addition to labor and employment matters.

Kirleis filed a complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in March 2005, and the EEOC issued a notice of the right to sue in September. In her suit, Kirleis alleges she was treated differently by the firm after she had children, and that the firm engaged in a pattern and practice of sexual discrimination dating back years.

The suit alleges Kirleis was told "gals" in the firm would perform all the work necessary "to prepare the cases for trial for the male attorneys who would try the cases." She alleges she was "deprived of wages and benefits" and left out of social events and client outings.

"We tend to think that discrimination in this day and age is very subtle," Williams says, "but this isn’t subtle at all. We’ve discovered numbers of cases where women are told they belong at home or in a less fast-track job. Employers no longer say ‘this isn’t a suitable job for a woman,’ but it’s surprisingly common for employers to say ‘this isn’t a suitable job for a mother.’ That’s basically what the plaintiff was allegedly told here."

Veilleux noted the type of law the plaintiff and firm practice. "What struck me is that this is a law firm that does employment law, and that’s the type of law the plaintiff practices. She’s probably counseling businesses, handling sexual harassment complaints, and writing company policies."

That may make the firm’s job of defending itself harder, Williams says. "In at least one of the 32 cases [against legal employers], the judge made it very clear he was holding the law firm to a higher standard because it had an employment section and should have known better," she says. "That’s something that might give law firms cause for concern."

Dickie McCamey issued a statement attributed to James Miller, the firm’s president and CEO: "We’re disappointed that one of our shareholders, not an employee but an owner in the firm who has worked with us for 18 years and who still works at our firm, has chosen to take this course. … We do not and never have discriminated against anyone on the basis of gender or in any other way. Beyond that, and because we’re in litigation, we will not respond here to specific allegations, other than to say that we intend to defend this baseless lawsuit."

A spokesman for the firm refused an interview.

"One unique part of the case is that you have a law firm partner suing her own law firm and remaining onsite during litigation," says Keith Cunningham-Parmeter, an assistant professor at Willamette University College of Law in Salem, Ore., who teaches employment law. "It’s highly unusual to see an employee stay on board while litigation is pending."

Kirleis’ suit describes her as an employee, not a partner, saying she "has no ability to make decisions or influence decisions" at the firm. Edward B. Friedman, who represents Kirleis, says that despite the firm’s emphasis in its statement on his client’s shareholder status, Kirleis was "a shareholder in name."

Kirleis would like to continue to work at Dickie McCamey, says Friedman, who is based in Pittsburgh. He says his client sued only to change "how she’ll be treated and how other women at the firm will be treated."

Williams says that not only are family responsibility cases increasing, but they also have a better chance of winning for plaintiffs than typical sexual discrimination claims. "If you look at the larger universe of cases against all kinds of employers, [these] cases have a higher success rate—about 50 percent—than employment discrimination in general," she says.

Employers defending family responsibility cases are "losing, and losing big," Williams says. The largest recovery Williams has uncovered for such a claim was a jury verdict of $1.5 million awarded to a former deputy prosecutor.

"Unfortunately, law firms are some of the most difficult places to work for people with families," says Cunningham-Parmeter. "We’re always going to have discrimination lawsuits we’re familiar with—harassment based on race, sex, national origin and religion—but the emerging area is in family responsibilities, and it’s all based on sex stereotypes, on what roles workers are presumed to assume at the workplace and at home."

State of New York better pay attention: In a welcomed decision, the State Supreme Court in New Jersey said today that same-sex couples are entitled to “the same rights and benefits enjoyed by opposite-sex couples under the civil marriage statutes.” However, whether that status would be called marriage, or something else, “is a matter left to the democratic process,” according to the court ruling.

The complete decision of NJ court can be accessed by clicking here.

(Last summer, NY Court of Appeals had rejected the possibility of gay marriage while advocating traditional views regarding desirability of marriage as a necessary union between a man and a woman.)

A councilman who is now facing sexual harassment compliant says, “I cant help it if I have a sense of humor.” And what is his type of joke like?

He offered his services to rape and abuse people at the Center for Abuse and Rape Emergencies.
Sun and Weekly Herald reports that Kay Tvaroch, executive director for CARE, which provides various services to survivors of sexual assault, domestic violence and other violent crimes, said this isn't the first time she's heard someone make that joke.

However, despite the serious public misconduct such as this, Tom Poole, the councilman has decided to run for reelection with even more adamance. Time people found out the sickness in it all.

A compelling commentary by Margaret Wertheim dealing with the widespread bias against women in science and engineering as published in New York Times today:

Numbers Are Male, Said Pythagoras, and the Idea Persists

When I was a physics major in the late 1970’s, my very few fellow female students and I had high hopes that women would soon stand equal with men in science. But progress has proved slower than many of us imagined. A report last month by the National Academy of Sciences documents widespread bias against women in science and engineering and recommends a sweeping overhaul of our institutions.

While there may indeed be subtle biological differences contributing to the scarcity of women in the top ranks of science, interviews make clear that many female scientists continue to experience both overt and covert discrimination.

The academy’s report is welcome, yet there is reason to believe that when it comes to the mathematically intensive sciences like physics and astronomy, it is not just bureaucracies that stand in the way.

Female physicists, astronomers and mathematicians are up against more than 2,000 years of convention that has long portrayed these fields as inherently male. Though women are no longer barred from university laboratories and scientific societies, the idea that they are innately less suited to mathematical science is deeply ingrained in our cultural genes.

Continue reading "Bias begins with the numbers" »

Florida’s Jacksonville Fire Rescue Department was under storm over several allegations of race and sex discrimination during the first week of August. An in-depth investigative report by the Human Rights Commission had found that many staff members were openly passing racial remarks aimed at black employees and women employees were routinely sexually harassed by an officer of Captain rank and some other male co-workers of his. The report initially suggested that the Mayor look into replacing the Fire Chief Rick Barrett and his staff. There were “widespread negative perceptions among African-American and female employees of inequities and favoritism throughout the department," the report stated.

The Commission upon discovering more cases of blatant sexual harassment, explicit racist comments by supervisors/managers and complete lack of disciplinary measures against the “white males” of the department, a couple of days later concluded that Barrett must be asked to resign.

However, Mayor John Peyton decided to stand by Rick Barrett! "These are my picks to lead this department. I think they do a great job in the balance," Peyton said.

Today, the Mayor’s picks are going to face some more heat. As an employee of 24 years with the department, Elizabeth Henderson has openly come out with an account of blatant harassment that should stir up the country’s assertion of “inclusiveness”.

“They do what they want to do, to whomever they want to do it to," Henderson said, who has faced two and a half years of ongoing harassment. "Once I heard the mayor say he gives the administration his 100-percent backing, that told me they now have the green light to continue doing what they have done all along. Leaving this current administration in control of correcting this issue is like leaving the fox in charge of the hen house. They are the ones doing it," Henderson said.

Indeed, with the Mayor proudly patting his “picks”’ backs, the fox needs to be focused on now.

By Jack Tuckner, Esq.

We at Tuckner, Sipser, Weinstock & Sipser, LLP currently represent a client who was terminated in the midst of her "maternity" leave. The offending company employs less than 50 employees, so it (and she) are not "covered" by the Family and Medical Leave Act, hence the quotation marks. She is entitled to take the same disability leave that all employees are allowed, as a post-partum pregnancy leave is indeed a "disability," albeit a transient and "healthy" one, but this company decided to terminate her within two weeks of her leave, indicating that they could not "wait" the full 6 weeks for her to return to work.

As she was a single mother whose 25K per annum position was all that separated her from full-blown impoverishment, her joblessness with a nursing baby not yet 1-month old left her homeless inside of a 12 weeks, coincidentally, the same time period allotted under the FMLA for women who have borne or adopted a child. Her homelessness then rendered her incapable of finding suitable alternative employment, as even if she could seek another position without email, a permanent address or even appropriate bathing and dressing facilities within which to prepare for a job interview, it was beyond challenging to find someone reliable to babysit in the NYC shelter system. Now, approximately 10 months since her firing, she is still homeless and unemployed but beginning to pick up the pieces as she is imminently poised to move into a permanent, city-assisted housing unit.

We are currently prosecuting this matter at the administrative level and will be filing a court complaint shortly. While our college-educated client would be happy to share her experiences with the readers, it is an unfortunate reality that too often, working women bearing children are discriminated against and terminated from gainful employment simply as a result of the choice to bear children, a common occurrence that inordinately befalls inner city single women with little or no safety net.

It would serve us all, and the children we ostensibly care so much about in our-no- child-left-behind culture of wishful thinking, if the spirit and intent of the "human rights" laws were applied in practice to the protection of pregnant women in the workplace. The following pages are informational regarding the scope of coverage for women facing differential treatment on the basis of pregnancy in NY and its environs (please click on the images to access the original size).

In a frantic face-saving exercise typical of multinational corporations skeptical of their public “image”, the second largest automaker in the world, Toyota has “settled” a sexual harassment suit involving its former top US executive who headed the North American operation.

Sayaka Kobayashi, a Toyota employee, had filed a $190-million lawsuit against the automaker accusing Toyota North America Chief Executive Hideaki Otaka of sexually harassing her while other Toyota executives failed to act on her complaints.

CNN reports today:

Kobayashi, 42, had claimed in the lawsuit that Otaka repeatedly asked her to accompany him to lunches, walks in Central Park and on business trips, where he tried to engage in sexual conduct with her. She said that her complaint to Toyota's second-highest ranking U.S. executive had been ignored.

Subsequent to this, Otaka was replaced by Jim Press, the first American to become president of the Japanese company’s US operations.

A new report by the Center for WorkLife Law (at the University of California Hastings College of the Law) has examined the growing trend of lawsuits filed by employees alleging that they were discriminated against because of their family caregiving responsibilities. As a culmination of three years of data collection on maternal wall lawsuits, the “family responsibilities discrimination” (FRD) cases involve workers – both women and men – who fulfill typically mothering or caregiving roles to family members.

The study, using 613 cases of caregiver discrimination, has identified lawsuits involving claims of sex stereotyping, “sex-plus” bias, pregnancy bias, hostile work environment, retaliation, disparate treatment, disparate impact, Family Medical Leave Act interference, discrimination and retaliation, Title IX violations, Employee Retirement Income Security Act violations, ADA associational discrimination, Equal Pay Act violations, breach of contract, tortious interference with contract, wrongful discharge.

This report empirically examines the ideas found in the germinal theoretical article by Joan Williams and Nancy Segal, “Beyond the Maternal Wall: Relief for Family Caregivers Who Are Discriminated Against on the Job,” (Williams & Segal, 2003).

The main findings:
1. Working-class families face inflexible schedules that clash with family needs.

6. Flexibility is possible in working-class jobs.


Some startling snippets:
While only 6% of Swedish two job families with children work in excess of 80 hours/week, over two-thirds (64%) of U.S. families do.

“For most working class families, child care is often patched together in ways that leave parents anxious and children in jeopardy.”


Underpinnings of the growth
According to the report:

The number of FRD cases has grown from a total of eight in the 1970s, when the first case was heard in US courts (Phillips v Martin Marietta Corp, USSCt, 3 EPD ¶8088) to 358 in the first half of the 2000s. In Phillips, an employer was sued for barring females with school-aged children from applying for jobs that male employees with school-aged children occupied. While the employer claimed that it did not discriminate against females because it allowed women with no children to apply for those positions, the Supreme Court ruled that the employer still discriminated against women who were also mothers. In the last decade (1996-2005), the number of family responsibilities discrimination (FRD) cases filed grew nearly 400% from the previous decade, from 97 cases to 481.

Analyses show that rapid growth in FRD lawsuits began in the 1990s and continues today. Increases are correlated with: (1) media coverage of high-profile lawsuits involving maternal wall discrimination; (2) growth in the number of employed mothers; (3) diffusion of information about FRD cases amongst the legal profession; and (4) changes in law making it more attractive to file discrimination lawsuits. FRD lawsuits have now been heard in 48 of 50 states and the District of Columbia. In addition, the report noted that more FRD cases have been filed by non-professional employees than by professionals, although the greatest number of cases in any single occupational category is in managerial/professional jobs, followed closely by those in technical, sales and administrative positions. By industry, the largest number of cases have been filed by employees working in service industries, followed by public administration.

Plaintiffs are more likely to win FRD lawsuits than other types of employment discrimination cases, the study finds. The mean award is $768,976, with the median just over $100,000 – the largest award to date is $25 million. The lawsuits analyzed in the report make a strong case that companies' effective handling of workers' caregiving responsibilities is an issue of risk management and companies that mismanage their work/life programs tend to fare poorly in court.

The study also revealed that small, local businesses make up the largest component of companies sued for family caregiver discrimination. Larger companies, however, are increasingly facing such lawsuits. Even companies publicly recognized for progressive work-family policies and practices and for treating employees well have faced FRD charges. Among companies sued for discriminating against workers with family responsibilities are nearly 30 that have been designated as "Best Companies to Work For" by Working Mother magazine or have been touted by Fortune's "Most Admired" list as amongst the best in the nation for treating employees well.

2. Litigating The Maternal Wall: U.S. Lawsuits Charging Discrimination against Workers with Family Responsibilities

Technorati: pregnancy discrimination

What’s the cost of an American citizenship? Appears like it can be more expensive than the $400 for filing N-400 form with biometrics. Or at least that is what Sang Yi Sevilla, a Korean woman and prospective American citizen, found out while she was being interviewed by a citizenship officer of Department of Homeland Security.
A recent article in Atlanta-Journal Constitution reports:

A Korean woman from Gwinnett County has filed a $5 million lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security after a citizenship officer pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting her during a citizenship interview.

Sang Yi Sevilla says Officer Kelvin Renard Owens intimidated her in June 2004 by asking, "If I let you pass, what are you going to give me?" according to a suit she filed Friday in federal court in Atlanta.

Owens grabbed her breasts and asked her to meet him outside the building at 4 p.m. to find out whether she had passed the test, the claim says. Sevilla says the officer also grabbed her hands and put them on his genitals and put his hand between her legs. She says she pushed him away and contacted authorities.

Owens, of Jonesboro, pleaded guilty in federal court to sexual assault in March 2005, the U.S. Attorney's Office said. A judge ordered him to spend weekends in federal prison for six months. The judge also put Owens on probation for five years and fined him $2,500.

U.S. Attorney David Nahmias said in a statement when Owens pleaded guilty that his office takes misconduct allegations seriously.

"This case represents reprehensible conduct by a federal employee," he said then. "The victim in this case not only was making every effort to legally seek her citizenship in this country, but was brave enough to fend off an attack from one of the people she needed to help her gain her rightful citizenship."

A lawyer for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service denied any liability in an April 2006 letter to Sevilla's lawyer, saying Owens was not acting within the course or scope of his employment at the time.

Sevilla is still waiting to hear if she passed the U.S. citizenship test.

(Lead on this entry: Liberal activist law professor, Vanessa Merton)

New York's Highest Court Issues a Wild and Crazy Opinion on Gay Marriage Licenses.... Queers Need Not Apply

By Jack Tuckner, Esq.

"There are enough marriage licenses to go around."
-Chief Justice Judith Kaye in her Dissent.

"We really can't think of any valid reason to continue to bar same-sex couples from enjoying the many benefits of memorializing their love and commitment to each other in a legal union that consecrates their vows and provides respect, financial benefits, security and societal sanctification to the relationship. It's really the only civilized approach to take at long last.

Especially, given the plain fact, as the Court acknowledged, that same-sex couples, who must adopt or bear children by artificial means, provide, by definition, more uniformly stable home environments for kids than opposite-sex couples may, whose babies are sometimes accidentally made. In other words--committed same sex couples certainly deserve equal treatment--but--on the other hand--fuhgeddaboutit--they're fags."

With this embarrassing decision, the Court protects no one, hurts a minority class of our friends and loved ones and, once again, a panel of eminent and wise lawyers enshrine ignorance and unconsciousness upon us by stamping this shamefulness with its imprimatur of righteousness.

Therefore, the Court's thinking is flawed, medieval and intellectually dishonest. Quod Erat Demonstrandum. As Henry David Thoreau famously said, "It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right."

Please read Katha Pollitt in this month's The Nation for a brilliant look at today's duplicity and hypocrisy surrounding same-sex marriage. Or just read it here:

Continue reading "Court Legitimizes Discrimination against a Protected Class" »

With the current legal and administrative rethinkings in matters of abortion rights, equal credit, pregnancy leave, anti-discrimination laws in education and employment, Martha Burk writes about how women in America are systematically forced to take two steps forward and one step back in many areas that were so secure a generation ago.

The full story here:

Summer isn’t over yet, but the heat on women is already at full blast. Catalyst, one of the top research organizations on the status of women in corporate America, reports this week that females are losing ground in the top echelons of the Fortune 500. Growth in female-held positions has fallen dramatically in the past three years. The National Women’s Law Center tells us that female degrees in math and computer science are way down. In what looks like a “back to the ‘50s move,” Governor Jennifer Granholm of Michigan signed a bill last week allowing the return of single-sex schools in her state. All abortions were outlawed in South Dakota this spring, setting up a challenge to Roe v. Wade that has a good chance of succeeding in a Roberts Court.

Continue reading "Women's Progress Curve" »

"The Teen Endangerment Act" is finally passed. Otherwise known as “The Child Custody Protection Act”, this anti-human rights Act was approved by the Senate tonight with a 65-34 vote. So the law of the land now says it’s a federal crime for anyone other than a parent or legal guardian to take a minor across state lines to have an abortion.

This drastic far-rightwing development took place following the review of pending Feinstein and Boxer Amendments. Anti-choice senators defeated an amendment offered by Sens. Robert Menendez and Frank Lautenberg, both Democrats from New Jersey, that would have funded programs to prevent teen pregnancy and help parents talk to their kids about tough topics like sex.

The letter sent by National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) to members of the US Senate yesterday was meant to apprise the Senators about the Act. In turn, it managed to pass the myths for facts:

“About 80 percent of the public favors requiring notification of or consent by a parent before an abortion can be performed on a minor daughter.”

Prevention or Punishment?
Owing to its ideological genealogy, the Act is punitive in nature, not preventive. Firstly it assumes a normal family for every teen, when it enforces a clause of compulsory parental involvement. Secondly it also assumes that teenagers will obediently disclose their dilemmas to legal or natural parents under all circumstances, or face undesirable consequences.

What the rightwing Senators Frist and Ensign and their collaborators do not seem to get is that teens are vulnerable in cases of pregnancy, not necessarily assertive, also because of the dominant patriarchal structure that has moralistic impositions related to abortion.

The moral police in the garb of Senators also preach refraining from sex until girls are married. Quite a few tragic assumptions ( that all girls are destined to marry) were made by Sen. Tom Coburn when he opined, “Abstinence is the best way to prevent teenage pregnancy."

What’s in store?
In sync with promoting self-centered individualism, the Act introduced by the ultra-conservatives, seeks to further isolate teens into forming their cocoon self, where all they have to look for, apart from television sets, would be their parents. Most teen pregnancies take place not due to lack of parental interventions, but because of existing parental neglects. To assume that already defenseless children would then go confide in their neglecting parents is grossly unjust.

Secondly and as a graver consequence, the Act will punish those who most genuinely want to help a teenager simply because the person is not “authorized” as a parent. So watch out, this Act indeed says grandmothers will go to jail if they are more trusted by girls. And this Act may also be entirely overlooking the stark reality afflicting thousands of girls who are victims of domestic child sexual abuse, often in the hands of their parents.

“Aerodynamics have proven that the bumblebee cannot fly. The body is too heavy and the wings are too weak. But the bumblebee doesn’t know that, and it goes right on flying, miraculously.” --Mary Kay Ash

Mary Kay, who always wore a diamond lapel pin shaped like a bumblebee, created the first corporate culture for women in America when her company got listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 1976.

Exactly 40 years have passed by, and it appears that either the American corporate houses are wary of bumblebee miracles, or are threatened by them. Either way, as “In the Lead” column of Wall Street Journal reported today, the male corporate bastion would let women employees work only at positions that do not threaten their status quo.

Columnist Carol Hymowitz writes that although women hold more than half of all management and professional jobs, the vast majority are concentrated in entry-level and middle positions. Last year, women held 16.4% of Fortune 500 corporate officer jobs, up just 0.7% from 2002.

Going by the rate of progress over the past decade (which has been on an average, one-half of one percentage point per year), it would take 70 more years of corporate struggles for women to attain parity with men (that is, for women to have just 50% of Fortune 500 board seats)!

And going by the current growth rate, will women of color ever reach any parity whatsoever? Apparently not! As further victimized at the corporate alter, women of color hold only 3.4% of officer jobs (as compared to 16.4% overall).

Currently, one in every nine Fortune 500 companies has no women on its board! And for those women who are on board, they are systematically excluded from key leadership, agenda-setting and decision-making opportunities, since they are astoundingly underrepresented as chairs of most powerful board committees, including audit, compensation, and governance.

Such systematic exclusion of women from decisive positions has become essential for the male supremacy to reign over its industrial complexes. As a result, at the topmost position, women have represented less than 2 percent of the Fortune 1,000 CEOs and just 1.4 percent of the Fortune 500 CEOs.

‘Came a long way, baby?’

Some proponents of workforce diversity are quick to point out that the growth of women will be gradual. Factors attributed to this optimism include widening corporate opportunities, scope for higher education, Civil Rights legislations etc. But this assumption of eventual progress is clearly based on a flawed historical understanding of women at the workplace. Most often we are led to believe that the women ‘have come a long way’ (remember Virginia Slims cigarette ads?), from being homemakers to being CEOs. And hence the facilitating passage must be the ideal one.

Now that we are grimly reminded that women occupy less than 2% of the CEOs positions, let us visit the workplace landscape to understand if they are indeed making progress, and if so, of what type.

In 1950, there were 18.4 million working women in the US. This has grown to an amazing 70 million now. Now this is some real growth here. According to Business and Professional Women’s Foundation, women represent 47% of the total labor force of America! Among women workers, 61% are African-American women, 60% white women, 58% Asian women, and 56% Latina women.

Whereas on one hand there is such an overwhelmingly high participation of women in the US workforce, comprising half of the entire labor, on the other hand, less than 2% of women actually own any major corporate house, and less than 20% even work as corporate officers.

If statistical analysis alone could help, then wars would not be taking place in modern times. It is imperative to go beyond the numerical analysis that’s done periodically by several profit and non profit agencies, and focus on ways to radically change the scenario. With sustained increase of this rate (which has been consistently been the case since decades now), there is no way an equity can be achieved. In fact, as seen from the disparity among women workers and women owners, the gender gap is not one of quantity, but of qualitative power.

It is about trenchant lack of women’s empowerment in the era of corporate globalization. The way is to radically change the structure from the top, starting from the “Fortunes”. And no amount of waiting for a noble legislation or of depending on just gestures from old guards of capitalism will do. Systematic oppression requires systematic upheavals.

Joe Solmonese has an almost brilliant analysis on GLBT rights exclusively for the CNN.

As president of Human Rights Campaign, the largest organization representing people of alternative sexual orientations, Solmonese rightfully does a scathing criticism of American politicians unprepared to take up GLBT rights as crucial for the country’s progress.

However, the thesis that he has proposed through CNN mainly consists of applauds to the private sector companies of America for being progressive in direction of LGBT welfare.

In reality, this is hardly the case. More than many of us, Solmonese is himself aware of the great disparity of treatments that exists between straight people and GLBT people in this country, and at the same time, the great deal of reliance that the private sector companies and the government have on each other in ensuring mutual progress.

How then the HRC report presents a different picture? A closer critical look at the findings of “The State of the Workplace 2005-2006” belies the CNN headline. Here is a small analysis.

CNN Myths:

1. For the first time, more than half of all Fortune 500 companies offer domestic partner health insurance benefits to their employees, according to the Human Rights Campaign Foundation's annual "State of the Workplace" report.

2. 10 times the number of Fortune companies cover gender identity today compared to 2001.

3. We have also seen wins in anti-discrimination and benefits policies at the state and local levels. Our survey found that seven states prohibit discrimination in private sector employment on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity -- California, Illinois, Maine, Minnesota, New Mexico, Rhode Island and Washington, plus the District of Columbia. Ten additional states ban workplace discrimination based exclusively on sexual orientation.

What’s important to note here is that there is not much of a difference between the way private sector and public sector treat the issue of GLBT rights so far. Statistics do not overwhelmingly support such a thesis. Secondly, a pat in the back of few private companies help in diverting from the real issue –that huge percentage of such companies do not have a policy. Thirdly there is a critical difference between “having a policy” and “implementing” it. No studies of worth has been conducted to see how many companies indeed have gone ahead and “hired” employees from the GLBT communities.

Political Economy:

A political economic critique of the state of affairs would have surely presented a very different image than what has been portrayed by HRC here. On their own admit, the GLBT consumers in the US are worth $641 billion. When 69% of GLBT people have indicated their shopping decisions would be influenced by companies’ workplace policies supporting equal and fair treatment of their peoples, companies (although reluctantly) must merely be reciprocating a favor.

Finally, while analyzing the healthcare benefits to domestic partners, the biggest point goes amiss. When the big private companies can monopolize on commodity prices, and can collaborate with the state on mutual profits, to what extent have they demanded to support the technical amendments of GLBT rights provisions so far? First, the partners of GLBT people are not federally recognized as spouses yet. Secondly, no federal law is yet in place to ban any employment discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. At such a juncture, how many private companies have actually lobbied for radical measures? Without doing so, any amount of reformisms are just suspect to their intent of mincing profits off the $641 billion marketforce. After all, even the domestic partner health benefits issue is based on inequality. Current federal law taxes contributions to a domestic partner's health insurance premium as part of the employee's income. So if an employee makes $50,000 a year and his/her partner's insurance is worth $300 a month, then the employee will be taxed on $53,600 at the end of the year. A married couple in the same situation would be taxed only on the salary of $50,000.

When the basic precepts do not change, all the jubilation on progress towards "American Dream" are mere rhetorical. Its not some law owing to some intrinsic moral values or few kind hearted legislators or a humane company (not the least, the big profiteers of Fortune 500 gang) that make inroads for radical changes in society. It is through informed vigilant citizenry, that people take up the causes of human progress and bring normalcy to halt, and progress to take over. Till then, basking in half-glories are steps taken backwards.

Reminds us, what Frederick Douglas had so aptly quipped: “Not all movements are progress”.

More cases for retaliation come to fore, following Supreme Court’s decision last month favoring broader scopes for workers to challenge workplace discrimination.

As an only female mechanic worker at Granite Construction Co.’s Salt Lake City repair shop, Dena Joan Richardson says she was paid less than her male counterparts, given the worst tasks with the least responsibility and frequently subjected to sexual harassment by one male co-worker.

After her complaints, she was finally laid off by the company she worked for about 12 years, on insufficient grounds. Finally she has filed a lawsuit in federal court for gender discrimination and illegal retaliation.

“I don't want someone else to go through what I did….I went through hell. Even if I could do the job that another guy under me wasn't smart enough to do, they wouldn't let me do it,” Richardson says.

Incidentally, Granite has been named one of the Top 100 companies to work for by Fortune magazine the past three years!

A recent focus groups poll commissioned by National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) has found out where the public stands on the issue of trans-inclusive non-discrimination laws. A vast majority of those surveyed support trans-inclusive laws, despite being asked transphobic language in their questions by the pollsters.

“We used a trans-unfriendly language to describe what we were talking about, and we said a law that would protect people from discrimination on the basis of gender identity would specifically protect transgender people. Transgender people are men who identify or present themselves as women and women who identify or present themselves as men and includes transsexuals, cross dressers, and people who have had or are considering sex change operations… And now I’m going to ask you again, I’m not going to ask you about your values, I’m going to ask you do you favor a law that protects people on the basis of both sexual orientation, gender identity, one or the other or neither? And we got 59 percent said both, nine percent one or the other, 23 percent said nobody. It’s good news,” said Candy Cox, NGLTF’s communications senior strategist.

Amidst applauds during last September, the House of Representatives passed a hate crimes bill that provided protections for transgender individuals. The lead co-sponsors of the House version were Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who is gay, Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.), who is a lesbian, and Reps. John Conyers (D-Mich), Christopher Shays (R-Conn.), Illeana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), and gay Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.).

However, the bill went through rough weather in the Senate. US senators Ted Kennedy (D-Mass) and Gorden Smith (R-Ore) refused to make the Senate version of the bill trans-inclusive. They apprehended the bill with a change of language could not have even seen light of the day. Their concerns were genuine, considering past overall hostilities towards similar gay civil rights bills.

In essence, both the House and Senate versions of the legislation had called for amending an existing federal anti-hate crimes statute that authorizes federal prosecution for hate crimes based on someone’s race, religion and ethnicity. The Kennedy-Smith bill in the Senate then went ahead and added sexual orientation, gender, and disability to the categories covered under the existing law. The House version also had added the categories of sexual orientation, gender, disability and gender identity.

Not all is well:
Although the House version had added gender identity, it pertains only to the hate crimes bill, not to the employment sector. The leading co-sponsor in the House Rep. Barney Frank opposes adding transgender language to the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, or ENDA. ENDA calls for banning employment discrimination in the private sector based on sexual orientation. Relevant to note here is the fact that ENDA itself is lying dormant in Congress since the 1970s. This has lent more apprehensions for Frank who says adding a transgender clause to ENDA would result in fewer co-sponsors.

The mainstream applied logic is that transgender clause helps prevent physical attack, and hence it should be suited for hate crimes bill. And considering that ENDA’s destiny is doomed in the Republican-controlled Congress as such, even without a transgender clause, any further alteration would harm the prospects ever greater.

What’s the real issue?
Well, few things have emerged. First off, categorizing people as LGBT would help only when they are provided with equal in-group access. In other words, the LGB people and the transgender individuals do not share the same concern, much less do they enjoy similar privileges.

As is becoming of a system of governance which has historically oppressed few groups and privileged certain others (in some unsophisticated terms, Malcolm X had alluded to this as ‘divide and rule’ policy), the current administration more so has been actively vocal about creating the distinctions more apparent. That the LGBT people do not enjoy similar rights as heterosexual people is no new knowledge. But to mar the united opposition to this systematic discrimination, the LGBT peoples themselves have been divided since some time now, in terms of the degree of their access to resources and rights.

Latest in the lowest ladder of oppression are the transgendered people, who have found absolutely no support from either the House or the Senate. If the House supports their inclusion in Hate Crimes bill, it refuses them access to ENDA. As for Senate versions, not even the Hate Crimes bill has time for the transgender.

The layers of difficulties that have been systematically in place to seclude the transgender people from the minimum safety and comfort that most heterosexual people take simply for granted poses few serious questions.

The ones that currently surface, even as the recent poll shows solidarity to causes of the transgender individuals include but are not limited to, the awareness of transgender, the privilege of the heterosexuality, and the redundant administrative hurdles.

Awareness of the transgender: It’s not just a few history textbooks filled with systematic lies for consumption of school children, its also the composite lot of media, military and industrial nexus that have refused to deal with the whole truths. As a result, heterosexuality has been taken for granted to such an extent as a religiously accurate norm, that any alternative is considered to be one non-normal group called LGBT. At this point, the dismissal of the minorities are done at the alter of celebration of the norm. Therefore, most are kept oblivious of distinguishing the nuances of gender and sexuality.

Without education of an understanding of what constitutes “gender identity” or “gender identity and expression”, we are finding resistance to their inclusion as forming the explicit language that’s needed to be there in proposed legislations. The transgendered people are absolutely accurate in their fear that the proposed laws will continue to discriminate against them, since judges may interpret the victims from a lens that’s indifferent or silent about covering them.

In the process, the politicians are acting on priority to ensure passage of the bill, and looking at the technicalities that will facilitate the process. They are in no way interested to get educated on the crucial differences between the LGB and the T communities and how non-inclusion of some languages might actually work in detriment to the transgender peoples’ right in the civil society and employment sector.

Privilege of heterosexuality: The ruling elites have always advocated the inevitability of hierarchy of oppression. And so, it is considered that sustainable reforms, not radical changes need to take place while all along posing one oppressed group against another. So different systems of oppressions such as race, sex, gender, etc are poised in a prioritized hierarchy, and not as constituents of a multi-layered complex that is exploited all at once.

To quote Audre Lorde from a chapter in “Oppression and social justice: Critical frameworks.” (5th ed., p. 51, Edited by J Andrzejewski, 1996), “Within the lesbian community, I am Black, and within the Black community I am a lesbian. Any attack against Black people is a lesbian and gay issue, because I and thousands of other Black women are part of the lesbian community. Any attack against lesbians and gays is a Black issue, because thousands of lesbians and gay men are Black.” The privilege of heterosexuality ignores the fact that heterosexuality itself is not a privilege by default any longer once one considers the oppressions of other race, class and gender variants.

Administrative hurdles: Administration poses deliberate problems because it gains from the divisive tendencies. The monopolist politicians who have thus far believed in standardized notions of the male supremacy have not stopped either at ensuring draconic laws that recognize marriage only between a man and a woman and grant them the best of civil rights, they have also countless number of times prevented progressive proposals from becoming legislations.

I am tempted to quote Lorde again, “It is not accidental that the Family Protection Act, which is virtually anti-woman and anti-Black, is also anti-gay. As a Black person, I know who my enemies are, and when the Ku Klux Klan goes to court in Detroit to try and force the Board of Education to remove books that the Klan believes “hint at homosexuality”, then I know I cannot afford the luxury of fighting one form of oppression only. I cannot afford to believe that freedom from intolerance is the right of only one particular group. And I cannot afford to choose between the fronts upon which I must battle these forces of discrimination, wherever they appear to destroy me. And when they appear to destroy me, it will not be long before they appear to destroy you.”

That’s a serious lesson for our well-meaning politicians if they are genuinely contemplating to benefit the people thus far discriminated against. Not merely for the representatives to see their names hit the halls of fame, for passing of yet another ineffectual bill.

In the classic American class society, the people down the hierarchy who physically serve the unwell are the ones least looked after. Nurses could be some of the biggest victims of this mentality, as their profession is mired with lack of respect, heavy workloads and low wages.

According to Institute for Women's Policy Research, wages for nurses stagnated in 2003 and then fell 6.4 percent in 2004, leading to a decline in nurses working at hospitals. Some of the key findings of this report include the following blatant indifference to workers’ deserved needs:

* Of 49 recent analyses of the nurse workforce, only 11 proposed increasing wages in order to attract more nurses.
*A report from the US Government Accountability Office cited "inadequate staffing, heavy workloads, the increased use of overtime, a lack of sufficient support staff, and the adequacy of wages" as key factors of nurse shortage.
*The link between wages and the number of workers seeking jobs--which most economists view as the key driver in labor markets--is too often overlooked when it comes to nurses.
*The quality of patient care suffers when cost-cutting staffing practices reduce nurse/patient ratios.
*Over the late 1990s and into 2000, nurses pay did not increase at all, although some hospitals had already begun worrying a nurse shortage in 1997.
*Instead of competing for nurses by increasing pay, hospitals often turn to a combination of overworking (through mandatory overtime), contingent workers, understaffing, and one time hiring bonuses to meet staffing needs.

Last week itself, four class action lawsuits have been filed against 20 of the biggest US hospitals, including no.1 HCA Inc and US Catholic Hospital System.

Nurses backed by Service Employees International Union, the country’s biggest health care union claimed that the hospitals had conspired to depress wages for nurses amid a national shortage. The claim says that hospitals discuss nurses’ wages over meetings via telephone and through written surveys, in order to coordinate and suppress pay.

The suits, filed in federal courts in Chicago; Memphis, Tennessee; Albany, New York; and San Antonio, Texas, seek back compensation and legal costs totaling "hundreds of millions of dollars" under federal antitrust laws.

As for the HCA, it has behaved predictably. Jeff Prescott, a spokesperson for HCA said, “This is one of four frivolous money-wasting lawsuits apparently generated by a union and a law firm designed to create publicity in markets where unions are trying to get membership,” said.

A Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene investigation has found the state public health officer for Washington County William Christoffel as a violator of the state sexual harassment policy.

The allegations first published by The (Hagerstown) Herald-Mail Sunday said that health officer Christoffel who has been on administrative leave since June 9, had made sexually explicit comments, played with condoms and hugged a worker.

Today the officer has denied that he made any offensive comments to his staff and said he would contest any action taken against him as a result of the findings.

According to a separate Associate Press report, the complaints of sexual harassment were originally made by Sandra C. Hoffman, assistant director of Johns Hopkins University's George W. Comstock Center for Public Health Research and Prevention in Hagerstown.

In the report prepared by investigator Hilda J. Davis based on interviewes of 13 witnesses from the Comstock Center and the health department, Christoffel had already admitted to seven offenses, including making sexually explicit statements, using condoms as a joke, hugging an employee publicly and referring to a school teacher who attended a school board meeting as "good eye candy."

Let’s do a reality check. No woman has ever led the presidential ticket of a major political party in the United States. Only one—Democrat Geraldine Ferraro in 1984—has been nominated for vice president by either the Republicans or the Democrats.

Earlier, Shirley Chisholm as the first black woman ever to run for President of the United States made an unsuccessful bid even for the 1972 Democratic nomination.

Today an AP report focuses on how US lags behind in female political representation. Yet, the report would not mention how the country could learn from others that have implemented radical quota systems to ensure women participation in the legislation. In fact the report attributes some unnamed experts as saying that factors helping female politicians outside the U.S. include financial support, women-focused reforms within individual political parties, and an organized effort by the media and the general public to champion political parity.

Whereas all these factors might be valid, the fact that countries like Sri Lanka, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Chile, Liberia, apart from Israel and UK have had absolute success in electing women politicians to the highest office does not much support the thesis of financial support and media reforms. In addition, a concerted effort to prevent women from joining the highest political battlefield can only be overcome through an equally passionate effort at ensuring participation, not by merely opening the platform to unfair competition.

The Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (MCRI) is a misnomer. It is deliberately misleading so as to hijack the spirit of civil rights movement by naming itself similarly. At its best, it’s a right wing effort (funded by businessmen like Ward Connerly) to sabotage the ongoing demands to implement affirmative action more proactively. At its worst, it’s a highly reactionary movement aimed at systematically promote discrimination at workplaces.

This fall, Michigan voters are going to decide on the fate of use of affirmative action policies in the state. It’s especially alarming because the MCRI is proposing to outlaw race, gender and other personal demographic data as criteria for public institutions including Michigan's public universities to use in furtherance of civil rights initiative. Only in 1997, University of Michigan spearheaded the movement of affirmative action to be applicable in colleges, but over the last many years, continues to be the prime target.

The irony is that MCRI is not a new initiative by the right-wingers. Indeed, President Bush has echoed similar sentiments before. On January 15, 2003, the President said,

"..the Michigan policies amount to a quota system that unfairly rewards or penalizes perspective students, based solely on their race. So, tomorrow my administration will file a brief with the court arguing that the University of Michigan's admissions policies, which award students a significant number of extra points based solely on their race, and establishes numerical targets for incoming minority students, are unconstitutional."

However, after a week, the President’s pleas also did not bear fruits for the reactionaries. In its first ruling on affirmative action in higher education admissions in 25 years, the Supreme Court justices voted 5-4 to uphold the University of Michigan's law school affirmative action policy by ruling that race can indeed be used in university admission decisions.

Detroit Free Press today runs two columns to provide voice to both schools of thoughts. Whereas Roger Clegg finds Affirmative Action an ambiguous term to deal with, Paul Hillegonds says we will roll back to the 60’s again if reactionaries had their way.

The first female building inspector in Hayward City Hall Margaret Dufresne had to leave the job in 2001 because male inspectors discriminated against her, and her superiors, most of whom were female, retaliated against her for raising discrimination complaints.

The trial resumed last week after the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling that makes it easier for employees to lodge discrimination complaints against employers.

The irony is that even after five years, the woman employee who should have received justice by now is trying to still defend her case. This time, also against allegations that she was a “whiner” at workplace! The reality is that the city is much less diverse in its workforce, with overwhelming majority being white males. This could be the case due to the city choosing to drop diversity training workshops in the early 1990s. City Manager Jesus Armas said that this needed to be done keeping in mind the economic recession and budgetary consideration. And amidst chuckles from the courtroom, he could not answer to Dufresne’s lawyer’s question: “why city leaders built a costly new City Hall in the mid-1990s when they were abandoning diversity training?”

As the trial goes on, one thing is certain: it’s a hearty respite that workers can now get their cases moving against the former or present bosses without a fear of any retaliation.

"Not all movements are progress"
Frederick Douglas

In an excellent overview on women CEOs in corporate America, Donecia Pea writes today that women represent less than 2% of the Fortune 1,000 CEOs and just 1.4% of the Fortune 500 CEOs!

According to a study, on the Fortune 500 corporate boards, in last decade, the average rate of increase in women’s representation was one half of one percentage point per year! And if women held only 14.7% of board seats, only 3.4% were women of color. At this rate, it would take another 70 years for women to hold approximately 50% of board seats (Catalyst. Right-click to save in PDF)!

The problem persists on the front of statistics, no doubt. But what’s also needed within discourse of the number studies is a critical emphasis on the genealogy of disparity and ways to work on it.

Such a trenchant corporate disparity can not be merely incidental. And the rate of increase in women's participation is not indicative of any progress. It’s perpetuation of a system of oppression in terms of both gender and race producing a class division. Current forms of implementations of civil rights laws are proving ineffectual to handle the inequity, and fresh radical steps need be taken to undo the centuries of exploitation. It’s not the ladder of fair competition that women are not stepping up on; it’s the unfair monopolists who are not ready to inch away from the seats of power that’s creating hostile prospects.

So what happens if someone takes part in a non-political march/rally? One would say, she/he gets to sport a new t-shirt and have a scoop of vanilla. After all, people take part in public spheres at all sorts of marches, including for breast cancer, and AIDS awareness, pro-choice, or even pro-life rallies.

Think again. Yesterday, a longtime columnist and features writer for Allentown-based Morning Call Frank Whelan was suspended from work without pay for having walked on a gay-pride parade.

Whelan, obviously disturbed and enraged, said, “I would be emotionally ill; I would be wretching; I would be incapable of working with these people. I cannot go back into that building. I was naive enough to believe the Morning Call would be happy [for me] because they are always talking about how they believe in diversity.”

And he is considering filing a lawsuit. Now that’s what you should do too, if you take part in a rally and you are suspended, because the rally you took part in does not suit the whims and fancies (or deep-seated prejudices) of the company bosses.

The sensations attributed to cases of sexual harassment often foster media to judge the women. However it leaves out the issues of intersections of different social locations. Women facing discrimination are more often than not victims because of their subordinate economic status in the hierarchy as well.

One glaring case which has come to light today pertains to 10 women of Davenport. These women belonged to lower economic class, and did not have much housing options. The landlord John Burche coerced sexual favors from them in exchange of reduced rent. A federal district court judge has decided $327,000 in favor of the women. That’s the heartening news.

But that’s still like dealing with the event. The system that perpetuates plights of lower economic class women is not being addressed. This is not incidental that the women happened to be at a juncture where they could be thus exploited. The court has correctly diagnosed that reduced rent is not a quids pro quo for sexual favor for landlord.

Stephanie Tavares writes for a business weekly in Las Vegas about how workplace romance can cause tricky legal problems. She takes a couple of rather mainstream arguments often proposed by the corporate sector about workplace harassments:

a) That, the sexual harassment could actually be grounded in a ‘workplace romance’.
b) Due to discrimination complaints lodged by one woman worker, workers’ relations get affected.

These two main arguments are actually incredible workplace myths that companies propagate, to help them function without facing any resistance against hostile work environments.

First off, sexual harassment is not related to ‘workplace romance’. Hypothetically speaking, even if one knows that a certain supervisor and a female worker had a romantic relationship at workplace, that is no ground for justification of any subsequent sexual harassment.

It should be clear that the validity of sexual harassment starts only after an employee complains of harassment or discrimination. It has nothing to do with the prior nature of relationship that the employee had with a supervisor. There is a fine line of distinction that the lawmakers are usually aware of, and the media should be sensible towards: sexual harassment invariably involves some sort of undue favors, a coercion and/or hostile work environment. It must not be allowed to be confused with terms such as ‘workplace romance’.

Secondly, filing of discrimination complaints could lead to non-cooperation from fellow employees afterwards. But it’s still an ‘employer argument’ that is allowed more privilege. Instead of resisting complaints lest it makes the environment hostile later on (and because the workers will miss their boss!), the affected employees need to be reassured that a legal judgment invariably states the undue practices of employers clearly enough for the entire country to know that the boss was wrong anyway. Hence, to refrain from complaining against acts of harassment in fear of future boycotting from fellow workers is too speculative a stance, and often a miscalculated one. Employees should not fall prey to such simplistic argument of possible apprehensions played up by the corporate houses to guard their own class interests.

For the content corporate houses, it’s often easy to have a sexual harassment policy drafted: must be taking a few committee members. Easier to let it be taken for granted: with the workplace inequity in gender representation, or at most times, with professed hostile environment for women workers. And easiest to “escape” the charges of violations: because one, the onus of proving charges usually takes long enough, during which the company regains its public sympathies; and two, resolutions are usually “settlements”, a matter of parting with some redundant profits.

In either case, kudos to a young woman who as a teenager was harassed by her restaurant manager and others. As a former server at a Steak n Shake restaurant in St. Louis, Amanda Nichols, 17, was subjected to come-ons from an older male cook, who pulled on her apron, touched her and made sexually explicit remarks. Nichols also claimed the man followed her to the parking lot one night after work, threatened her and exposed himself. The manager did not heed to her complaints, and consequentially she was asked to leave her job.

But she went on to file a lawsuit against a company that has been running its business since more than 70 years now and operates 430 restaurants in 20 states of the country. Promptly, Steak n Shake then denied the allegations.

Continue reading "Teenage sexual harassments: Implementations after Settlements?" »

Absolutely not. Well, almost.

The fine line is treaded by more than 70 million U.S. women who work, and almost three-quarters of them who have children.

Resultantly, according to Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the claims of pregnancy discrimination are increasing, up 31 percent from 1992 to 2005. In Fiscal Year 2005 itself, EEOC received 4,449 charges of pregnancy-based discrimination, resolving 4,321 pregnancy discrimination charges and recovering $11.6 million in monetary benefits for charging parties and other aggrieved individuals (not including monetary benefits obtained through litigation).

Few relevant issues that surface in matters of pregnancy discrimination includes the fact that federal law does not require even minimal accommodation for pregnancy-related disability, as long as the employer treats pregnant employees at least as well as other temporarily disabled employees. But pregnancy not being inherently disabling, many women can work just fine (in comfortable settings such as being an academician), and at the same time, for those women who are in specific jobs requiring physical movements, even normal pregnancy poses limitations.

The pressing needs of the hour then demand that a stable, uniform legislation be in place that makes it a point for the employers to provide accommodation irrespective of the nature of work. A social adaptation to understanding the needs of pregnant women workers, their indispensability, an enforced rule to require employers to keep them in job despite pregnancy, and welcome them back to the job soon after they rejoin after the duly paid leave, is the starting point.

Suffolk County, New York Police Department has been recently found guilty of discriminating against pregnant women on the force. This is a resounding victory for the potential victims of pregnancy discrimination in male-dominated sectors.

The pregnant officers were denied desk duty positions just because they were pregnant and all of six plaintiffs were forcibly absent from work for at least two months before giving birth. They were also forced to go on unpaid leaves after their allowance of sick days were exhausted.

The insensitivity of NYPD comes to light in a case where it involves even its own staff members. The most common sense understanding of causes and nature of pregnancy has been lost on the department, notwithstanding the legal factors. Under the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, passed by Congress in 1978, an employer violates the law if it intentionally discriminates against pregnant employees or maintains a policy that adversely affects pregnant employees. The PDA covers pregnancy, childbirth or related medical conditions, including abortion.

Will Daisy Jaffe prevail over Morgan Stanley?

Jaffe, a female Financial Advisor at Morgan Stanley DW, Inc. filed a national class action lawsuit today in federal court in San Francisco, charging the company with gender discrimination. Morgan Stanley DW, Inc. is the retail brokerage arm of Morgan Stanley.

She said, “Although I was an excellent, hardworking Financial Advisor, Morgan Stanley favored my male colleagues, who were frequently less qualified than I was. Because of Morgan Stanley's favoritism, my compensation was lower than less-qualified male brokers in my office.”

Jaffe alleged violations of federal and state laws, including Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the California Fair Employment and Housing Act on behalf of herself and the class. She also claimed that Morgan Stanley DW, Inc. discriminated against her individually based on her age in violation of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act.

Cleo Kirk, a sitting Shelby County Commissioner of District 3 in Tennessee is in the spotlight. A former administrator Calvin Williams named him as the person who is going to face a federal sexual harassment complaint. This one is going to be an interesting political battle actually, since Williams himself is going to face trial for having been charged with bribing in order to influence “business transactions” of the County.
Williams disclosing Kirk’s name to the media may seem little odd. In fact, he says, “I'm going to say it, because that is the truth, and he'll have to answer the best way he (Kirk) can”.

Continue reading "Political motivation, the usual excuse" »

The pregnant pauses by women professionals operate on entirely different dynamics. The women say, these are pauses entirely decided upon by them. Not with any work pressure, and certainly not because of any management misconduct.

This is where the non-essentialist nature of women resurfaces for careful perusal. In the lower economic class bracket, women struggle hard to keep their current jobs, owing to the fact that the manual jobs are the only source of economic sustenance. These are the jobs they rely on to pay the bills, and take care of children. This also leads them to feel the need of confronting the management in case of unjust treatment during pregnancy. The financial factor apart, the women from lower economic strata also do not feel inhibited in claiming discrimination, because often times that’s the last logical resort to attain justice.

In contrast, career professional women in high-profile jobs (television anchors) often tend to underestimate the possible consequences of job loss, one, because they are more certain to get a job back after the ‘phase’ is over, and two, their own reputation is publicly connected with that of their organization (like the masthead rules supreme).

Hence one should not be surprised at statements coming from high profile women professionals today, who even while stepping down from their positions do not ascribe the causes to any sexist organizational structure. They rather prefer to take the onus of decision entirely upon themselves. At times to the extent that they even become defensive.

Just look at ABC “World News Tonight” anchor Elizabeth Vargas’ statement to Philadelphia Inquirer last week, “I'm not a pregnant working mother wronged. I played a crucial and active role in this decision.”

Her need to assert that she had played an active role in this decision is part of a dynamic that has layers within. Before being replaced by 63-year-old Charles Gibson, from a coveted anchor chair position Vargas announced on the television “For now … I need to be a good mother.”

Vargas is forced to play into the stereotypes that foster male domination in an almost invisible manner. By refusing to identify with “wronged” working mother, she affirms the male perspective, that not all pregnant working mothers are wronged if they relinquish the jobs. Or the statement that to be a “good mother” she needed to leave the job, is another vindication of male norms.

In the entire process of assertive positions of privilege, fundamental system of gender oppression remains entirely unquestioned. Why does a woman have to make a decision that will tantamount to her “leaving” the job? Even if the decision is made “actively”, how informed is the decision? Why would not the organization insist that she does not leave the job especially considering that the audience was looking forward to receiving Vargas, a pregnant Vargas with all the warmth? Finally, why would the onus of proving a good parent necessarily lie on a woman? And why becoming a good mother should entail closed door disconnect from one’s profession one so carefully shapes up throughout?

Unlike railroad miners or fast food counter cashier women, high-profile women may not be in desperation of a source of financial sustenance. But exactly like them, they are exploited systematically in the male myth world of a value system of adjudging a pregnant woman as weak, a working woman as bad mother and an assertive working woman as limited conditional resource.

Media create, sustain and foster images, not just by lending voices to some (like celebrities), but also by withholding voices from some (like the transgender). In a sensation-hungry, sadistically competitive society that we live in, media exist to quench the instant thirsts for blood (hot news). And in the entire process, intercontextualities and complexities of social locations are often sacrificed.

Hence one finds the mainstream news choosing sides of the “authorities” or the “victors”. The sources of news in order to be credible, then emanate from the powerful quarters. And balance of news coverage becomes an incidental casualty.

In the recent review of a case involving a transgender person who was interrogated by the police over possession of a stolen purse, we can see the insensitivity of media as a public sphere.

Continue reading "Court unconvinced with apparent femininity" »

Editor of National Review Online, Kathryn Jean Lopez writes today about a Wisconsin-based Catholic school where a teacher was fired for artificially conceiving her twins. Furthering the curiosity on how a pro-life institute might have issues with pregnancy, she explains it was because the teacher had used in vitro fertilization to conceive. IVF usually unintentionally involves the destruction of embryos, and hence drawing ire from Catholic Church.

In a fervently religious environment that the country is under siege during present administration, the role of teachers to question assumptions have become secondary to their roles as upholder of Church traditions, however irrational they may be.

Continue reading "Its official! Discrimination in Catholic Schools" »

U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission had sued the Delano based Kovacevich 5 Farms on grounds of its rejecting women for seasonal jobs in its vineyards. Today, six farmworkers have filed a motion to join the EEOC.

The lawsuit claims that the company hired only men for about 300 jobs in harvesting and driving tractors each year between 1998 and 2002.

In a separate class action lawsuit last year, Kovacevich 5 Farms has already been sued in the past by workers who were forced to work unpaid hours doing preparatory work in the fields. A Fresno federal judge had awarded 500 farmworkers $1.7 million in that class action lawsuit last year.

Sexual harassment at workplace turns out to be a nightmare not just on ground of the harassment itself. The double jeopardy involves the manner in which punishments are awarded. The first to be penalized is usually always the employee herself. And this continues to happen partly because there are no sensitization trainings given to the corporate bosses and no assertion training for the female workers, in specific to sexual harassment.

In its pristinely developed capitalistic society today, possibly the ‘customer is king’ (a very dubious adage indeed), but what’s more true is that the ‘Boss is Always Right’.
This is a constant fear that governs the ways of marginalized employees: to keep quite or leave job or do both. The golden rule of course is NOT to quit.

Quite often, retaliation complaints are far stronger than the original, underlying complaint for discrimination.

Continue reading "NY City Council toughens discrimination policies" »