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" »

San Diego Business Journal discusses five steps to updating Sexual Harassment Prevention Training.

Educating Supervisors Is Key to Complying With State Law AB1825

Question: As a small business, do I have to worry about the new sexual harassment training laws? What should I do to make sure my company is compliant?

Answer: Every small business runs the risk of sexual harassment claims without proper training of its employees. Although California state law AB1825 only requires supervisor sexual harassment training for companies with at least 50 employees, there are things you can do to protect your business and your personnel regardless of your company’s size.

For starters, distribute and enforce your company’s anti-harassment and Equal Employment Opportunities policies, as well as your complaint-resolution process.

Make sure supervisors know how to respond to employee complaints.

Explain to supervisors the unique aspects of California harassment law, which places greater responsibility on their actions and inactions. Make sure they understand about both types of sexual harassment (quid pro quo and hostile work environment).

Continue reading "Updating Sexual Harassment Prevention Training" »

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" »

Wal-Mart policies continue to hurt. Costco Wholesale employees are not amused, and a lawsuit on behalf of 700 female workers, has been finally granted. More on New York Times this Friday:

By STEVEN GREENHOUSE and MICHAEL BARBARO

A federal judge granted class-action status yesterday to a lawsuit filed on behalf of more than 700 female workers at Costco Wholesale claiming that the retailer had systematically discriminated against women seeking jobs as managers.

In the lawsuit, the lead plaintiff — a former assistant store manager who was upset about not being made a store manager — asserts that Costco discriminated against women in promotions because 13 percent of the company’s store managers were women, while nearly half of its employees were women.

The lawsuit undercuts Costco’s image as one of retailing’s most benevolent companies, with generous wages and benefits that make it more attractive for employees than competitors like Wal-Mart Stores.

In her ruling yesterday, Judge Marilyn Hall Patel of Federal District Court in San Francisco concluded that the case should be certified as a class action because “plaintiffs have presented strong evidence of a common culture at Costco which disadvantages women.”

The lawsuit, filed in August 2004, contends that at Costco, the highest-paid store management positions — assistant general manager and general manager — are doled out through an informal, word-of-mouth system that favors men over women.

Unlike most competitors, Costco neither posts openings for such positions nor accepts applications for them, the lawsuit said. Instead, it said, a largely male group of senior executives handpicks managers.

Brad Seligman, the plaintiffs’ lead lawyer, said, “Costco has a blind spot in its employment policies, which has allowed a glass ceiling to fester.” He called on the company, based in Issaquah, Wash., to start posting jobs and to adopt objective standards to determine who should qualify to be a store manager.

Continue reading "Costco Bias Suit Is Given Class-Action Status" »

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" »

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.

Starting in 2004 with the Marriage Affirmation Act, which outlawed any partnership contract purporting to provide the benefits of marriage, Virginia’s conservatives crusaded for a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, which passed last month and goes into effect Jan. 1. The state also does not allow for second-parent adoptions for unwed couples, rendering Poe a legal stranger to her daughter in the eyes of the law.

Washington Blade has an exclusive story: Fight or flight?
By KATHERINE VOLIN

When Mary Cheney, the lesbian daughter of Vice President Dick Cheney, announced her pregnancy through a spokesperson last week, reactions were mixed.

Gay rights opponents were predictably appalled at the idea of a gay couple raising a child, while supporters expressed frustration that by working on her father’s re-election campaign, Cheney had supported a political regime that would deny her own partner’s parenting rights.

Cheney, who did not respond to interview requests, is pregnant with a child due in the spring that she and her partner of 15 years, Heather Poe, intend to raise together. Adding to the irony of the story is that the moms-to-be live in Virginia, which has some of the most restrictive anti-gay laws in the country.

Starting in 2004 with the Marriage Affirmation Act, which outlawed any partnership contract purporting to provide the benefits of marriage, Virginia’s conservatives crusaded for a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, which passed last month and goes into effect Jan. 1. The state also does not allow for second-parent adoptions for unwed couples, rendering Poe a legal stranger to her daughter in the eyes of the law.

“After Jan. 1, when the amendment becomes effective, I’m afraid to say that we suspect there will be someone whose goal is to disrupt Virginia families for one reason or another and then it’s just going to have be played out in court,” says Jay Squires, a local lawyer and head of the board of directors for Equality Virginia, a gay rights group.

Squires also says that there are concerns that “some judge some place is actually going to hold that the amendment has the effect of invalidating agreements that were legally binding.”

In the meantime, he recommends a wait-and-see approach for gay parents in Virginia regarding the implications of the amendment, but it’s possible that families will be torn apart by the Commonwealth’s new law.

SOME OF VIRGINIA’S gay parents are divided over whether they should stay or flee the state for more gay-friendly environs.

Continue reading "Gay parents face difficult choices in anti-gay Virginia" »

KITV/Honolulu Channel reports:

An Oahu jury on Friday awarded more than $1 million to a Hawaii woman in what is being called the state's largest verdict awarded to an individual for a sexual harassment case.

The jury decided to make HIS Hawaii, a travel company employing about 80 people in the islands, to pay.

Attorneys for Rieko Aoki said the former customer service agent was fired after she spoke up against being sexually harassed by the manager and other co-workers.

“There were repeated occasions where the manager of the department and others attempted to remove Ms. Aoki's bra during work hours. In addition, malicious rumors were spread about Ms. Aoki in the work place. There were other occasions where she was lifted up to expose her undergarments under her skirt," attorney Larry Remillard said.

Remillard said the verdict is in part so large because HIS Hawaii rejected Aoki's claims of sexual harassment and instead promoted the harasser.

AP/News4 reports:

The top female trooper at the Nevada Highway Patrol has filed a federal sexual harassment suit against the agency, claiming command officers contributed to a hostile work environment.

Captain Jacquelyn Sandage first made the allegations against Colonel David Hosmer last summer. The suit filed in Reno federal court seeks 500-thousand dollars in damages. Sandage is the first woman to achieve the ranks of lieutenant and then captain with NHP.

Hosmer resigned in June and Major Robert Wideman, who was chief of the northern command, was demoted to captain after a team of consultants first investigated her allegations. Her lawsuit charges the atmosphere hasn't changed and that harassment of female employees continues within NHP.

A Hollywood producer faces another lawsuit: this time sexual harassment at workplace.

Wenn.com reports:

BARBRA STREISAND's ex-boyfriend JON PETERS has been slammed with another lawsuit from a former employee accusing him of sexual harassment.
In a lawsuit filed Tuesday (05DEC06) in California, the SUPERMAN RETURNS producer is accused of sexually harassing former employee SHELLY MORITA and exposing himself to her three-year-old daughter.


Morita, who is the plaintiff in the case, claims that during the year she worked as Peter's personal assistant, ending in February 2006, she was "harassed, verbally abused, and intimidated," to the point where she was forced to resign.
She alleges that during a car ride the two shared during a trip to Australia, "Peters kept on asking plaintiff to smoke marijuana, and when plaintiff refused, he tried to blow the smoke on Plaintiff's face, leaned towards plaintiff and started kissing plaintiff."

Morita also alleges that Peters, who has also produced CADDYSHACK, FLASHDANCE, RAINMAN and BATMAN, exposed himself to her young daughter, asking the child, "Do you want to see how boys go pee?" This isn't the first time the 61-year-old producer has been accused of sexual misconduct toward an employee. In 1998, COLLEEN BENNETT, Peter's former executive vice president of finance, filed suit, alleging that Peters groped her, exposed himself to her and conducted meetings in his underwear.
LA Times story here.

An Iowa judge is on defense to clarify his stand in regards to a sexual harassment claim by a former female co-worker against him.

KTIV-TV reports:

The judge at the center of a sexual harassment claim took the stand, today, during a civil suit filed by the former head of Juvenile Court Services.

Bridget Hayes claims Judge John Ackerman touched her inappropriately; and other co-workers discriminated against her during her three years on the job.

Hayes claims derogatory "cartoons" were posted around the work place about her during her job performance evaluation. She says the cartoons read, "you're outta here", and "another one bites the dust." But, during cross examination, the attorney for the state, Grant Dugdale, asked Hayes why she thought the cartoons were directed at her. Hayes said, because someone told her.

Next on the witness stand, three different character witnesses, including Larry Williams, the Superintendent of Sioux City's Community Schools. All three said Hayes was easy to work with, and proficient in her job as the Chief Juvenile Court Officer. Dugdale questioned how well they knew her, and said their ability to observe Hayes performance on the job, was limited.

Dugdale also brought up each account that Hayes gave during her testimony about the alleged sexual harassment, and inappropriate touching by Judge John Ackerman.

Continue reading "Judge alleged of sexual harassment" »

Posted by Saswat Pattanayak | Permalink | Email This Post | Comments (0)

Posted In: Discrimination, News, Sex

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Students in a Kentucky based paper have expressed resentments about their university policies regarding sexual harassment.

In the past five years, four Eastern faculty members accused of sexual harassment have gone relatively unpunished by Eastern. They lost their jobs, yes; but they were allowed to resign or simply didn't have their contracts renewed. While they were warned of impending termination, not one was actually fired.

None of the accused faculty, even if they truly sexually assaulted students or not, can be prosecuted for a crime according to Kentucky law, unless the cases involved sexual assault.

Turns out, though students are always encouraged to report sexual harassment, once they do, not much is done by the state or by Eastern.

The issue then becomes not just whether the alleged faculty really did sexually harass students, but whether Eastern or the state punishes them enough if they've done so.

Kentucky law currently says that if Eastern employees are accused of sexual harassment and about to be fired, they must be given ten days notice. During that ten day period, the university must give the employee the chance to resign.

In other words, the current procedure slaps handcuffs on the person, gives them the key and says, "Look, we're going to arrest you in five minutes. But if you want to leave, the choice is yours."

What idiot Eastern employee accused of sexual harassment wouldn't resign?

Let's face it, the law - meant to protect the innocent - sometimes ends up protecting the guilty.

So, bad news kids. It seems that whole hour your professor spends the first day going over the syllabus - which almost always undoubtedly includes what to do if you're sexually harassed - is officially a waste.

We, as students, obviously need to do a lot more than just report sexual harassment from now on. From the looks of things, we should also report to Eastern and the state how impotent their sexual harassment policies really are.

CommonDreams.org has this thought-provoking feature story on why Wal-Mart is not the place to shop this holiday season.

Thalia Syracopoulous writes:
As a mother, grandmother and now even great-grandmother I have lots of shopping I want to do for this holiday season. This is a busy time of year and there is much I'd love to buy. Like many others, I don't have enough money to do it all, so I have to think before I shop.

I have to think about what to buy and where to shop. Good quality and affordable price are major considerations but they are not the only important things. I want my choices to be for the good of my family and my community, and women are an incredibly important part of my community.

So, despite the lure of low prices, I'm joining other women in Seattle on Thursday to urge shoppers to think before they shop at Wal-Mart.

I won't be shopping at Wal-Mart because Wal-Mart really is bad for women.

Of course, discrimination against women is common in corporate America and I can't guarantee that every place I shop treats women well. But Wal-Mart is the world's largest employer and one of the worst abusers of its women employees in the U.S.

It isn't just that Wal-Mart doesn't pay a living wage; it's that they pay women even less than men in the same positions. Women make up more than 70 percent of Wal-Mart's hourly employees but less than one-third of its store management. Only one of its top 20 officers is a woman. And, in 2001, the few women who become managers earned $14,500 less than their male counterparts. Women hourly workers earned $1,100 less than men. These are a few of the reasons Wal-Mart is the subject of the largest class-action suit ever in this country. The lawsuit represents more than 1.5 million present and past employees of Wal-Mart and its affiliate, Sam's Club.

It goes beyond that. This year, Wal-Mart instituted a salary cap on its employees so they can only earn so much. Wal-Mart now uses more part-time workers. If you work fewer than 34 hrs/week, you have to wait a year before being eligible for health insurance and, even then, your children cannot be included in the coverage. Full-time employees have to wait 180 days before they become eligible for health benefits. That's six months before you or your children can go to a doctor for any reason, even an emergency. Should a woman be one of the lucky ones who is eligible, and can afford to buy the insurance, she will learn that her health plan does not cover contraception.

We women are the shoppers in this country. In particular we are the ones who are most likely responsible for buying the basics -- food, clothing, shoes, school supplies, toilet paper and toys. These are the things Wal-Mart sells. If I choose to save money on each item by shopping at a Wal-Mart where the woman waiting on me can't afford day care, health care, food or even the contraceptives that might keep her family from growing larger than she can support, I am hurting her and a lot of other women. That is not good for me, my family or my community.

I know most of the women working at Wal-Mart are thankful they have a job, even one that underpays and possibly mistreats them. That is no reason for us to sit back and let the abuse continue.

Together, we can change Wal-Mart. Please think before you shop. You can learn about NOW work at http://www.now.org/issues/wfw/wal-mart.html

Thalia Syracopoulos is a member of the board of the Seattle chapter of the National Organization for Women.

© 1998-2006 Seattle Post-Intelligencer

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."

Bush administration has given green signal to new proposals for proliferation in single sex public education in the US. In fact over the years, the number of public schools exclusively for boys or girls has risen from 3 in 1995 to 241 today.

This is not just quite predictable on part of the conservative lobbies, but at the same rate defies the existing laws that were brought to force following years of struggles against sexist power structure.
The National Association of State Boards of Education says that historically, restricting enrollment in a public school program according to sex has been seen as a possible violation of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 and the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution. Title IX prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in any educational program receiving federal funds. Though Title IX does not specifically disallow a district from offering single-sex schools, it does require that districts provide comparable facilities, courses, and services to boys and girls.

The NASBE site has described the arguments against single-sex schools, to distinguish the incidental factors affecting performance:

* Most studies of single-sex schools have been undertaken either in private schools or overseas. Student characteristics vary considerably between private and public schools and between American students and those of other countries; consequently, policymakers cannot assume that the positive outcomes associated with single-sex education documented by research would be replicated among diverse public school populations.

* Data suggest that parents and students who choose single-sex schools are more motivated and achievement-oriented than average. Therefore, the higher achievement documented in single-sex schools may be due to the nature of the students and families rather than the nature of the schools.

* Most single-sex schools have other attributes that correlate with higher academic achievement, such as a smaller student body, stronger emphasis on academics and higher level of commitment to the school's mission. Consequently, the positive outcomes attributed to single-sex schools could be due to institutional factors other than the single-sex student body.

Finally, some opponents to single-sex education believe that efforts to implement a few single-sex schools will subtract resources and energy from the more important goal of improving public schools overall. They are also concerned that tampering with Title IX regulations could undermine decades of work in bringing equality to boys' and girls' programs. Others contend that separating boys and girls can lead to more, rather than less, sex bias. They also point to research showing that when certain groups (such as low-achieving or at-risk boys) are targeted for enrollment in single-sex schools, these schools can be labeled as being for "bad kids," thereby reinforcing stereotypes.

Caryl Rivers and Rosalind C. Barnett in LA Times opine:

“We need to ensure that any single-sex classrooms set up in public schools under the proposed Bush administration regulations will not be based on unscientific ideas about boys and girls.
We know that children learn in many different ways, but segregating them by sex will serve most of our children poorly.”

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.)

Jennifer Loviglio offers a personal account of sexual harassment and how workplaces today almost normalize the crime as a chore.

Excerpts:

I grew up knowing this: it's my body and no one has the right to say or do anything that makes me feel uncomfortable. My mother tried to build a protective wall around me by hammering in this message repeatedly.

By the time I was 14 and started waitressing, I'd heard it a zillion times: "It's your body and no one has a ...."

"Well duh, Ma," I'd interrupt. "It's my body. Like, whose else would it be?"

My first week waitressing, I got the warning. It's the same warning the congressional pages got about Representative Mark Foley, the same warning people all over the country give newcomers every day: "Look out for so-and-so. He's a creep."

I can't remember my first creep's name. I can't remember his name for the same reason that the warning is so ubiquitous: because no one does anything about sexual harassment. There have been so many creeps since my first creep that their names all blur together. So many leering co-workers, groping college custodians, obnoxious dates, and hinting bosses. It's hard to keep track.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. At the restaurant, I avoided... let's call him "Mark." He was the cook, so I had to be friendly. As long as I stayed away from the walk-in freezer in the basement, I was safe. I saw the other waitresses race up the stairs carrying bins of lettuce or tuna, swearing and grabbing napkins to wipe Mark's smelly kiss goo off.

They were older than me, and they put up with it. But I knew it was wrong. Like a 4-year-old acting out an imaginary battle with the bad guys, I decided that if Mark pinned and groped me, his ass would be out of a job and in court.

Be gentle: I was only 14 years old. What did I know?

A derogatory comment by a Michigan county Animal Control Director has violated the sexual harassment policy and director Keith Huff could face disciplinary action by the end of the week.
Gaylord Herald Times has this as the top story today.

The Otsego County's sexual harassment policy, which was recently updated, states "any employee or department manager who violates this policy is subject to discipline up to and including discharge." The policy lists "Making derogatory comments, insults, suggestive remarks or jokes based on a person's sex," as an example of such harassment. Although not as a consequence of the finding, Huff is planning retirement soon.

Abby Bar-Lev of The Minnesota Daily has contributed a valuable addition to the Plan B discourse. She makes three major points:

With Plan B available behind the counter, more control is left in the hands of pharmacists. Hence, the decision to limit its availability to those older than 18 is discrimination based on subjective morality and political compromise, not scientific fact.

The women who are most in need of emergency contraception are being denied their rights: Women younger than 18 are the most vulnerable and should receive equal access to Plan B as those older than 18. Those being left behind in that equation are the youngest women, the women most unprepared to bear children and those with the most at stake by being denied emergency contraception.

We must not be placated with a decision that only veils itself in justice and science while denying equal access to the most vulnerable segment of our population. Equal access to emergency contraception for all is another battle to fight, and it is a battle that can and will be won.

Well said. We are in solidarity with you.

News update:
Chile has more progressive lawmakers in this regard.

An Illinois state police officer has won a sexual harassment suit filed against the state agency. A federal jury has awarded investigator Belinda Storey $146,000 in damages after concluding that the state agency retaliated against her when she complained of being sexually harassed by a now-retired supervisory officer.

According to the decision, state police had unjustifiably given her inferior assignments and lower job-performance marks after she complained about the harassment.

The Supreme Court has recently ruled that retaliation against an employee filing a discrimination claim constitutes discrimination itself.

Do American colleges care enough to sensitize sexual harassment policies among the community members? Or have the policies just been rendered a legal compulsion?

Media reports suggest that sexual harassment policies are turning out to be mere formalities for orientation sessions. Or maybe, as an effort to introduce students to diversity than to proactively socialize them.

A study by American Association of University Women (AAUW) has found that less than 10 percent of students who feel they have been sexually harassed tell a college or university employee about it. The study conducted by AAUW Educational Foundation used an 11-page “Sexual Harassment On Campus Survey Instrument” and can be accessed here.

Fox News quotes Michael Smallis, the deputy to the vice president in the division of student affairs at the City College of New York (CCNY), who agreed that many students might not recognize when they are harassing or being harassed and the school officials could always do more to address the matter.

Media reports have circulated that sexual harassment claims have come down and that by itself is a great news. According to the U.S. Equal Opportunity Commission reports, the number of claims made in 1997 was 15,889 as opposed to the recent figure of 12,679.

However the 10-year gap fetching the positive results may not have been due to some factors of enlightenment alone. Before we start making predictions for the next decade of progress, one needs to cogitate over the fact that workplace diversity itself has increased of late. And because of more women in the workplace, there have been lesser amount of sexual harassment at work. More women are able to hold onto their old jobs and more women are entering the workforce also due to various levels of women’s activism. Hence it is imperative that the women rights are preserved and their awareness promoted, for the rate of harassment to decline further. Its also an alarming trend that despite a rapid growth in women participation in the country’s workforce last decade, the harassment cases still continue to be quite high.

Wendy Bliss of the Society for Human Resource Management attributes the decline to an increase in sexual harassment training since 1991 She opines that employees have gained awareness of how sexual communications and behaviors on the job, even if intended as harmless fun, can be offensive to co-workers.

Not just that; even as the number of claims filed have gone down, the size of damage awards has gone up, from an average of $141,000 in 1994 to up to $1 million10 years after.

Despite forming almost half of the law school graduates, women account for only 18% of the clerkships.

Within the last decade, there has been dramatic decrease in female access to participation in the country’s legal system. In fact, in last 12 years, this is the first time that the number of clerks is in single digit (7 out of 37), and more importantly, the case is even distressing considering that today there are at least 4,000 more female students graduating from law schools!

Volokh Conspiracy comments:

Is the cause possible differences in innate intelligence at the tail ends of the bell curve (what I'd heard called the idiot-genius syndrome, which leads men to be overrepresented both among the very low-IQ and the very high-IQ)? Sex discrimination in law school classes (whether on the exam or before) or in hiring? Social pressures that push some women away from law school? Differences in innate ambition? Social pressures that lead men to be more ambitious than women (for instance, because less ambitious men face more condemnation from parents, peers, or prospective girlfriends than do less ambitious women, or because more ambitious women face more such condemnation than more ambitious men)? The tendency of women to marry at a somewhat younger age than men, coupled with a tendency of married people to on average be less likely than single people to move? (Moving is often needed to get the prestigious appellate clerkship that can help lead to a Supreme Court clerkship.) The greater tendency of women than men to have spouses or lovers who aren't easily movable, which may again make it less likely that women would move to get the prestigious appellate clerkship? A combination of some or all of the above?

* Justice Breyer: 13 men, 15 women
* Justice Stevens: 16 men, 12 women
* Justice Thomas: 16 men, 12 women
* Justice Ginsburg: 16 men, 12 women
* Justice O'Connor: 14 men, 10 women
* Justice Souter: 18 men, 10 women
* Chief Justice Rehnquist: 13 men, 5 women
* Justice Kennedy: 25 men, 3 women
* Justice Scalia: 26 men, 2 women

Some reflections needed for Kennedy and Scalia here..

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.

Pregnancy Pause continues to mark the beginning of this century as one of the most crucial question in women’s rights movement. Essentially also because many women activists themselves are opposed to equating the pause with sexual discrimination consequence. Indeed, at the helm are concepts such as “good family”, “responsibility” “motherhood”, which sound too harmless to pose direct human rights violations.

In focus recently is Elizabeth Vargas, co-anchor of ABC's "World News Tonight" whose announcement that she was taking an extended maternity leave (basically implying that she was replaced by a male anchor), has led to feminists' organizations claiming Miss Vargas' announcement was a cover-up of a demotion based on sexual discrimination.

Chenoa McKnight, the assistant to the president at the Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute makes a conservative argument against feminists today in the Washington Times.

Although that is not very unusual, what strikes one are the manners in which mainstream media provides scope for publication of some views that, one thought had been answered at least a decade or two back in this country.

Let us revisit the classic right-wing arguments that McKnight proudly showcases, in her own words, in the article published today:

What do feminist leaders have against being a "stay-at-home" mom?

How many of these feminists are mothers?

It is a personal choice for each woman (and her husband) how she juggles family and a career.

Feminist leaders really are not pro-family and in more ways than one are not pro-women either.

What kind of role models for women are feminists seeking to support?

Barbara Bush said, "Your success as a family, our success as a society, depends not on what happens at the White House but on what happens inside your house."

In the words of my wise father, the greatest legacy you can leave in this life is with your children.

If such deeply reactionary thoughts (affirming the colonial legacies of ‘stay-at-home’, husband’s choice, pro-family, role models, ‘inside your house’, and children concepts) reflect the acute intellectual vacuum of the neo-cons, their publications for wide dissemination surely indicate the slavery of the so-called fourth estate to the first three branches of phony religiously conservative democracies.

Knicks’ president, general manager and new coach Isiah Thomas is busy defending his stand in the Sanders sexual harassment claim.

Where the matter has turned murkier is still at the level of classic assumptions regarding what constitute sexual harassment. When he defends his actions, he employs the same lens as during the times he actually commits the actions.

Thomas has admitted touching and trying to kiss a woman who was then a team executive. He has even admitted that he greeted this former team executive Anucha Browne Sanders with the sentence: “What, I can’t get any love from you today?” He also admitted that he had placed his hand on her shoulder and was attempting to kiss her on the cheek on that day.

And of course, in a perfect show of sexist understanding of workplace relationship issues, he has taken for granted his right to come across as himself and feel perfectly fine to get away with it, since as some reports to his defense mention how Thomas had been earlier made infamous for his cheek kisses, when he famously once kissed Magic Johnson on the cheek before a Finals match-up.

Thomas does not believe these actions are inappropriate, denies any further actions on his part, and his defense team rather thinks that Sanders, who as the team's senior vice president for marketing was one of the highest-ranking female executives in the NBA was a “disgruntled former employee” who wanted to, “harm Thomas, whom she blames for her professional difficulties and secure an unwarranted sum of money from Thomas and Madison Square Garden.”

January last year in New York Times coverage of the issue, Jack Tuckner was interviewed by Harvey Araton. Tuckner said, "Most of us who do this day in and day out, we seek to resolve cases at the earliest stages, resolve it and learn something from it. Sometimes it behooves the organization not to fall to its knees, but all of the extracurricular possibilities have to be considered. Are you going to withstand, Mr. Thomas, the scrutiny for the things you may have forgotten? Whose interests is this going to serve, besides the attorneys? You can see this is not in the best interests of the organization, nor for her, in terms of remaking her career. But somebody went ahead and made a decision that would make David Stern want to pull his hair out."

West Virginia’s Higher Education Policy Commission (HEPC) has expressed wonder as to why it has been dragged into a sexual harassment case initiated by a former cheerleader of Marshal University.

A former cheerleader has filed a lawsuit against the Marshall Board of Governors, her coach Dunn and the HEPC, claiming she was sexually harassed during her one year as a Thundering Herd cheerleader.

According to a report by The Record, she claims male members of the squad exposed themselves, rubbed their genitals on the female members' faces and called the females "bitches, whores" and other derogatory names, including one typically used to refer to female genitalia. Several cheers had code names of a sexual nature, and that longtime coach Dunn who allegedly instructed the girls to act in a sexually provocative manner at a golf fundraiser, was partly to blame.

HEPC has nowhere expressed regret over the issue per se. Instead it has preferred to steer clear of the issue. In its motion, it says, "There is no mention of what, if anything, HEPC did wrong in this case. The complaint acknowledges that coach (Donna) Dunn was an employee of Marshall University. The complaint does not set forth any affirmative action in which HEPC engaged and which purportedly caused harm to Plaintiff."

Perhaps HEPC is correct in its assessment as regards its own roles. But the sheer apathy towards the systematic sexual exploitation of cheerleaders is an issue that needs a revisit, at least from this agency that was built to be “responsible for developing, establishing and overseeing the implementation of a public policy agenda for the state's four-year colleges and universities.”

University of Wisconsin-Madison is investigating allegations of sexual harassment made by a female employee at a campus power plant. The 31-year-old employee Amy Gabel alleged that she has suffered harassment during her two years at the UW Walnut Street Power Plant and retaliation for complaining.

Her male co-workers who harassed her include the plant superintendent. In a complaint filed with the state's Equal Rights Division, Gabel claims the plant superintendent asked her to have sex with him. She says male co-workers posted offensive pictures of women, repeatedly questioned her ability as a woman and made sexual comments.

AP reports that this case is the latest sexual harassment claim to surface at UW-Madison, which has 30 days to respond to the allegations. The school's fertility clinic has been rocked by sexual harassment allegations against a doctor. Earlier this year, a former top administrator was cleared of allegations brought by a student and an employee.

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)

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.

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!

The city animal services department of Los Angeles had to wait till today when massive protests by activists over the last week finally changed its stance towards participating in a planned bikini contest called “Hooters for Neuters” for spaying pets.

It speaks volumes about the department’s reactionary compositions that have lent administrative helps to an organization systematically aimed at degrading women. Although, from one angle, it does appear to be natural to collaborate with the Hooters, since the department itself espouses spay and neuter as the methodical solution to welfare of animals!

However, the department has technically not backed out of the event. It has merely assured that it will not receive any money from the event. So the “Hooters for Neuters”, a conservative, anti-animal rights, sexist organization of disrepute will still continue to use the city department as its partner on all its publicity campaigns and gain legitimacy.

Under pressure, the Hooters website has undergone several changes since last week. In the beginning the official poster had a bikini clad woman supporting animal sterilization.

After severe protests from many feminist organizations, the city Controller Laura Chick responded in support of the activists. “Are we going backward here? We are a city with all kinds of progressive programs that empower women and end discrimination in the workplace, and now we're being connected with a Hooters bikini contest. It isn't right.”

Animal Services General Manager Ed Boks finally got convinced that the poster was at least degrading to women, and the poster accordingly changed on Hooters restaurant chain website, replacing the woman with a dog wearing a T-shirt that says “Hooters for Neuters”!

And now after more forced introspections, Boks has released a press note saying that the department will bow out of the July 13 fundraiser at the Hollywood nightclub hosted by the Hooters restaurant chain.

However, the Hooters on their part still mention the LA Animal Services department on their new amended poster.

In the meantime, according to reports, Councilwoman Jan Perry said the department's attempt to be creative in telling pet owners to sterilize their animals “crosses the line.” And animal activist Judy Cairns of San Pedro said she could live with the bikini contest on the condition that city officials — namely the men — also show some skin. “I want to see Mayor Villaraigosa's legs,” Cairns said.

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 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.

Today three women workers are facing hostile consequences for a brave front they adopted more than six months back.

Last November three women firefighters had sued Toledo city, Ohio over gender discrimination. They had filed cases against the Chief of the Toledo Fire Department as well as two Deputy Chiefs, accusing them of gender discrimination, retaliation, and creating a hostile work environment for women. Each plaintiff had asked for damages and compensation in excess of $250,000.

Not to be outsmarted, they had also taped various conversations at the workplace that supported their claims.

Instead of truly introspecting over the possibly genuine claims and basing on the evidences, work towards sensitively diversifying the work environment, the department is showing fire of rage. It has gone ahead suspending these women workers and filing administrative charges for taping evidence!

Despite recent Supreme Court ruling this Thursday strictly condemning retaliating employers, the Toledo Fire Department is obviously not unnerved. Now this also shows why the women must have been absolutely right in their decision to have sued the City at the first place. The Fire Department clearly has agendas: Discrimination, arrogance, and now retaliation. Someone ought to tell them, its illegal!

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.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 had made it illegal for employers to retaliate against employees who complain of discrimination. But until yesterday, the Supreme Court had never specifically defined ‘retaliation’.

In a landmark unanimous ruling, the Supreme Court has now described scope for retaliation, and made all but trivial actions taken against a worker filing a discrimination claim illegal. What this implies is that the workers who have filed complaints of discrimination against employers will have much better scope now to file for separate discrimination cases against their bosses who retaliate. The ruling Thursday focused on the meaning of language in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Such a major victory for the workers has come about following the recent ruling in the case of Sheila White, who had filed a sexual harassment case against her supervisor at Burlington Northern & Santa Fe Railway Co. in Memphis, Tennessee during 1997.
Full coverage here.
After all these years of struggles, it was this female worker's persistent stand against discrimination at her workplace that has finally helped define the scope of workers’ rights everywhere in the country. Read the ruling here.

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.

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" »