What is most noteworthy is the fact that in the three most respected professional fields – law, medicine and business – women are treated most abysmally. Despite the stringent manners of admissions into professional schools that awards degrees in these coveted areas of expertise, and the accompanying social status that identifies virtues of honesty and integrity with these specializations, it so appears – from the latest US Department of Labour statistics – that the most esteemed professional fields are also the most exploitative ones as well. At least so far as gender inequality is concerned.

In legal occupations, American women earn 56 cents per dollar that the men earn. Legal professions include the jobs of lawyers, judges, magistrates, other judicial workers, paralegals, legal assistants, and miscellaneous legal support workers. Likewise, in the medical profession, among the physicians and surgeons, women earn 64 cents per dollar the men earn. Third highest hall of shame is reserved for business management executives. Female financial managers earn 66 cents per dollar their male counterparts earn and women human resources managers earn 69 cents per dollar.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, women still lag far behind men in almost all the industries. The inequality exists most clearly for instance among physicians and surgeons (women $1,228, men $1,914), loan counsellors (women $754, men $1,118), purchasing managers (women earn $1,029 weekly, men earn $1,383), claims adjusters, investigators (women $845, men $1,128), computer programmers (women $1,182, men $1,267), lawyers (women $1,449, men $1,934), postsecondary teachers (women $1,030, men $1,342), retail salespersons (women $443, men $624), real estate brokers (women $745, men $939), inspectors, testers (women $513, men $754), financial services sales agents (women $798, men $1,237), etc.

Among several hundreds of jobs that were surveyed, women were found to be earning slightly more than the men only in the fields of bartending and baking.

As we begin the Women’s History Month, the above serve as timely reminders as to how the history needs to be revisited and radical feminist movements be reintroduced.

There’s no question that his advertisement is discriminatory under federal law, and it’s hard to believe anyone would try to defend it with a straight face without sounding like Nathan Thurm, the nervous, sweating, chain smoking lawyer played by Martin Short on SNL.

    A Bona Fide Occupational Qualification (BFOQ) is a defense to acknowledged discrimination under basic civil rights laws, where an employer is permitted to discriminate against an employee on the basis of religion, sex, national origin or age in those instances where those protected statuses are a “bona fide occupational qualification reasonably necessary to the normal operation of the particular business or enterprise.” 

    On a case by case basis, to determine if a discriminatory policy constitutes a BFOQ, first look at the particular job in question and what it requires to perform it.  Then look to the discriminatory policy and determine if it is necessary to performing that job.  For example, airline pilots are prohibited from serving as captain after reaching the age of 60.  This discriminatory rule is based on the reasonable notion that a pilot’s skills deteriorate with age, and that the safety of the passengers depend most essentially on the captain.    Yet, if a 60 year old pilot is working as a flight engineer, for example, he could not be fired for this reason, as age is not a BFOQ for that position.  This exception also holds true for French restaurants hiring exclusively French-born chefs, for example, but would fail if used to support the failure to hire a non-French janitor, as it’s not “reasonably necessary” to the authenticity of the restaurant.  Similarly, a religious school may discriminate in its hiring decisions regarding its faculty, limiting acceptable religious beliefs to the school’s denomination, but it may not do so with its secretarial hiring decisions, as whether the secretary is Catholic or not has no connection to the integrity of its Catholic identity.

    The employer must prove “plainly and unmistakably” that the admitted discriminatory policy, such as only hiring male “housepersons” meets the terms and spirit of this narrow BFOQ exception to our civil rights statutes.  An employer  must demonstrate (and ultimately prove in court) that its discriminatory practice is “reasonably related” to an essential operation of its business, which is often a common sense analysis, such as, whether a men’s clothing manufacturer would be permitted to advertise to hire only male models (it would). 

    In the case of this advertised housekeeping position, not only isn’t there a reasonable relationship between the job description given and the male gender of the applicant, there isn’t even an rationale, articulable basis to argue for such a counter-intuitive and just plain silly and obvious sex discriminatory advertisement.  I’m sure the real reason is something as mundane, typical, customary and sad as the owner’s strong preference for hiring only men. 

Obama administration must be commended for its newly announced support for the Paycheck Fairness Act (S. 182). This bill – a much needed update to the Equal Pay Act of 1963 – would take steps toward finally closing the wage gap between men and women by closing loopholes in the current law and strengthening weak remedies. Passage of the bill is one of the recommendations made by the administration’s Equal Pay Enforcement Task Force.
 
The Paycheck Fairness Act would provide workers with the tools they need to ensure equal compensation, including fair remedies, additional enforcement tools and technical assistance and training for both employers and employees. Last year, the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed the Paycheck Fairness Act; the bill currently has 40 co-sponsors in the Senate and is poised for passage.

Here is the statement by the President –

In America today, women make up half of the workforce, and two-thirds of American families with children rely on a woman’s wages as a significant portion of their families’ income.
Yet, even in 2010, women make only 77 cents for every dollar that men earn. The gap is even more significant for working women of color, and it affects women across all education levels. As Vice President Biden and the Middle Class Task Force will discuss today, this is not just a question of fairness for hard-working women. Paycheck discrimination hurts families who lose out on badly needed income. And with so many families depending on women’s wages, it hurts the American economy as a whole. In difficult economic times like these, we simply cannot afford this discriminatory burden.
My Administration has already begun to address this problem. In my first week in office, I signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which helps women who face wage discrimination recover their lost wages, and in my State of the Union Address, I promised to crack down on violations of equal pay laws. Today the Equal Pay Enforcement Task Force will present its recommendations, which include ways to better coordinate among enforcement agencies and inform employees about their rights. These steps support women, and they also support businesses that are doing the right thing and paying their employees what they deserve.
We cannot do this work alone. So today, I thank the House for its work on this issue and encourage the Senate to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act, a common-sense bill that will help ensure that men and women who do equal work receive the equal pay that they and their families deserve. Passing this bill is one of the Task Force’s key recommendations, and I hope Congress will act swiftly so that I can sign it into law.

By John Slattery for CBS

A female employee of a Manhattan publishing company has filed suit, claiming a very hostile work enviornment. She said she was targeted because she’s a woman and a Muslim.

Nona Abdelrehim, 26, said the magazine firm she works for was like “Animal House,” a sort of jock fraternity culture that was hostile to women. “Comments made to me directly by co-workers about my body, and it’s incredibly uncomfortable.”

Abdelrahim works as a manager at GDS International, based in the U.K. with it’s New York office on Wall Street, an office she said that places a premium on hard-drinking and sex talk.

“It’s all based around drinking, having a good time, inappropriate gestures that are being made,” she said.

She said not only was there sexual harassment, but there was anti-Muslim discrimination with images on computers. “There was one sales update saying so-and-so dropped a $50,000 bomb on whatever project and then they had a picture depicted of a Muslim man in garb indicating a terrorist. People were commenting, people were laughing.”

After not getting satisfaction from complaints to her company, she got a lawyer to file suit. “They have discriminated against Nona by creating an environment that’s degrading to her in particular but certainly to all woman who work at GDS,” said attorney Jack Tuckner.

The company issued this statement: “She is still a valued employee and we support our employees as best we can. Therefore, commenting on this matter would not be fair or supportive.”

For now, the young woman is still employed by the publishing company, but she wonders how long it can last.

The suit seeks compensation for damages but the amount is not specified.

BY JOSE MARTINEZ
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Tuesday, November 24th 2009, 6:02 PM

A shapely 26-year-old stunner is suing her employer for sex discrimination, portraying the publishing firm as a “Mad Men”-era artifact that’s overheated by a “jock fraternity culture.”

Lobna Abdelrehim, a manager at GDS International, paints her coworkers as hard-drinking horndogs who asked if she has breast implants, equated salesmanship with swordsmanship and passed around emails about beddable moms known as MILFs.

“It’s just a regular sort of animal house circus,” said lawyer Jack Tuckner of Tuckner, Sipser, Weinstock & Sipser.
Abdelrehim, a manager for the UK-based company, contends she was frozen out for complaining about X-rated office antics that included meetings where “stop being a f—— p—-” and “close the deal, you c—!” were salesmen rallying cries.

Abdelrehim, who joined GDS in September 2007, said her troubles started at last year’s office Christmas party, when she was one of two women awarded the dubious “most allergic to conservative clothing” crown.
Another prize went to the staff’s “best-dressed man.”

A Muslim, Abdelrehim said the office was rife with anti-Islam discrimination.

“She’s beautiful and she’s modern, but she’s dressed in very professional attire,” Tuckner said. ?”She certainly doesn’t cover it up, but she’s not wearing a burka.”

The suit, filed in Manhattan Supreme Court, says the firm “promotes and celebrates a culture of alcoholic beverage drinking,” teaches female workers that sex sells on “the Boulevard to Bombshell Bitchiness” and invited staffers to a charity chest waxing.

“The invitation indicated that one female employee was ‘frothing at the mouth’ in anticipation of personally waxing one of the ‘very hairy’ manager participants,” the suit says.

A spokesman for GDS International, whose publications include Food Safety US and Next Generation Agriculture, declined to comment on the suit.

Abdelrehim was still employed at the firm as of Tuesday, but Tuckner said her career prospects at GDS are bleak.
“They have told her she’s pretty much doomed,” he said.

Expecting a Baby, but Not the Stereotypes

By EILENE ZIMMERMAN
Published: November 21, 2009

Q. You recently became pregnant and expect to continue working through the pregnancy and after maternity leave. Although the initial reaction has been positive, is it possible you will face negative repercussions in the office?

A. It is possible, said Jack Tuckner, a partner in Tuckner, Sipser, Weinstock & Sipser, a law firm in Manhattan specializing in women’s workplace rights. That’s because pregnant women are often stigmatized and stereotyped and can elicit unwanted paternalistic protection, Mr. Tuckner said.

For example, he said, someone might think it’s best “if the pregnant woman isn’t included — she can’t stay out late, can’t knock back martinis with the team and then work until 11 p.m. and she has to use the bathroom all the time.” A pregnant woman might also be excluded from e-mail lists, meetings or business trips.

Eden B. King, an assistant professor of psychology at George Mason University, said that women interviewed for studies she has done on workplace pregnancy and discrimination reported feeling excluded from new projects that would help their career development.

“They are seen as already being out of the game,” she said. “Some women report experiencing a form of benevolent sexism, where they are treated like a child who needs to be protected or people pat their stomach.”

If you feel you are being marginalized or subjected to hostility you should complain, Mr. Tuckner said, because federal and state laws protect pregnant women from being treated differently from others.

Although it’s advisable to put any formal complaint in writing, an angry letter to human resources may be the wrong approach because it could result in people turning against you, he warned. Instead, write an informal letter or e-mail note. It could read something like this, he said: “‘I’ve worked here for 10 years and added a lot of value to this company and I want to continue to work here. But here’s the problem: Since I told Joe about my pregnancy and asked about the maternity leave policy, he’s excluded me from business trips and reassigned my best accounts. Can you please help me with this?”

Q. When is the best time to disclose the pregnancy?

A. Many women want to wait until they are past the 12-week mark. But depending on how closely you work with others in your department, you may feel that it’s best to tell them even earlier, especially if you’re experiencing physical symptoms like nausea and fatigue.

Disclosing your pregnancy early also allows more time to communicate about it with colleagues. “I think being really explicit early on about what is happening and what your plans are for the next six months, and then six months after that, helps co-workers manage their own expectations,” Ms. King said.

Q. The physical symptoms of pregnancy are often hard to deal with at work. How can you deal with your need to use the restroom more often or handle bouts of fatigue without appearing unprofessional?

A. Marjorie Greenfield, an obstetrician and author of “The Working Woman’s Pregnancy Book,” advised combining trips to the bathroom with other places you need to visit, like the mailroom. When in meetings, sit near the door so you can make a quick escape if necessary.

“About 70 percent of pregnant women experience nausea and vomiting,” she said, “so make yourself a bag of emergency supplies to combat that” — like ginger snaps, dry cereal, crackers, hard lemon candies and mouthwash, “and an extra blouse, in case it gets stained or sweaty.”

In dealing with fatigue, ask about working more flexible hours, so that you can come in later and get a little extra sleep. Some women also try to plan time off at the eighth or ninth week, which tends to be when symptoms peak, Ms. Greenfield said.

Q. You want your career at the company to continue after you have the baby, but you worry that while you are off on maternity leave you won’t be seen as a team player anymore. How can you alter that perception?

A. Counteract that stereotype upfront, by talking to your mangers and teammates.
“Tell them your career is very important to you, that you plan on coming back, are committed to the organization and your job,” Ms. King said.

Keep your foot in the door while you are on maternity leave by calling in to see how projects are progressing and stopping by with the baby for a visit, said Jamie Ladge, an assistant professor at the Northeastern University College of Business Administration who has conducted studies on pregnancy in the workplace.

Q. Are there any benefits to being pregnant at work and returning afterward as a new mother?

A. In her research, Ms. Ladge said she found a real benefit — especially for first-time mothers, who suddenly become connected to a group of people at varying levels within the company who are also parents.
“You make friends with more senior people, clients and those in other departments, easing into a conversation without making it all business,” she said. “Now you have this common ground and that can have very positive ramifications for your career.”

E-mail: ccouch@nytimes.com.

Feminist Radio And Beyond…..

Sexual Harassment
Women’s Rights attorney and women’s rights in the workplace advocate Jack Tuckner debates the issues.

Writer Barbara Berg talks Sexism in America: Alive, Well, And Ruining Our Future. What went wrong with the women’s movement and how to fix it.

And…The Colorado Sisters of the Women’s Collective perform indigenous storytelling about females in the struggle.
The Women’s Collective covers the entire spectrum of political, cultural and intellectual issues crucial to women’s lives, from feminism and revolutionary global sisterhood to critical aspects of movement building, the mind, body and men.