Employment Law Issue: Gender Discrimination
Before doing the research for this assignment I would have never thought that gender
discrimination could have been a major issue. It appears discrimination is alive and well in the businesses of America. In recent years many suits have been filed and settled. Most are settled outside of court. Home Depot settled a gender discrimination suit in 1997 that alleged that women were not given the same opportunities for advancement as their male counter parts and for discriminatory hiring practices for around $100 million. In October 2004 Wachovia Corporation settled with the U.S Department of Labor for $5.5 million over allegations it had engaged in pay discrimination against females. The list of current suits includes Microsoft, Costco Wholesale, United Airlines, Consolidated Freightways and Wal-mart. The Wal-mart lawsuit has become the largest private civil rights case in U.S. history. This suit could end up with as many as 1.6
President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the 1964 Civil R...
A protest in Utah against Wal-Mart
Civil Rights Act of 1964million current and former female employees. (Update 6: Judge Approves Wal-mart Class Action Case, 2004). Title VII (Civil Rights Act of 1964), prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. It goes on to include the Equal Pay Act of 1963 (EPA), which protects men and women who perform substantially equal work in the same establishment from sex-based wage discrimination.
I attempted to find articles and studies that dispute the existence of gender discrimination in business but it seems few deny that it exists. The disagreement arises as to why it exists. Some say it exists because discrimination affects a women's ability to get the proper education, which limits their choice of careers. Others say that women just
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choose not to enter fields that are predominantly male because of the possibility of discrimination, so, if a women chooses a lower paying...