Wal-Mart discrimination case will go to trial February 7, 2007
Posted by C.A.R.D in benefits, Card, CARD Sexism, Carl Tobias, Citizens Against Racism and Discrimination, Civil Rights, corporate policy of discrimination, discrimination lawusit, female, females, Joseph Sellers, Lawsuit, sex bias, Sexism, sexism against women, sexism lawsuit, Supreme Court, Wal-Mart lawsuit, Wal-Mart sexism, Wal-Mart sexist, Women, work discrimination.comments closed
Appeals court expands class-action suit that could include 2 million women
Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the biggest U.S. private employer, lost a bid to prevent 2 million current and former female workers from proceeding as a group with sex bias claims in the largest employment lawsuit in U.S. history.
A federal appeals court in San Francisco on Tuesday upheld a 2004 lower court ruling granting class-action status to a lawsuit accusing Wal-Mart of paying women less than men and giving them fewer promotions. That ruling expanded the suit, originally filed by six women, to include all women who worked at Wal-Mart stores from December 1998 to the present, excluding upper management and pharmacy workers. With the decision, women employed during that period at Delaware’s eight Wal-Mart stores are now included in the suit. The company employs 4,056 workers in the state.
The court’s 2-1 decision is a blow to Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart, which is facing more than 200 federal lawsuits by employees. While the workers still have to prove their claims at a trial, the ruling provides leverage for a settlement. The workers are seeking billions in back pay and punitive damages, court-ordered changes in Wal-Mart’s practices and independent monitoring.
“Expert opinions, factual evidence, statistical evidence and anecdotal evidence present significant proof of a corporate policy of discrimination,” the appeals court said. The potential number of women covered by the case, originally about 1.5 million, had grown to about 1.6 million by the time of the class certification decision in 2004, according to plaintiffs’ lawyers. The number of former and current women workers who could be part of the class is now closer to 2 million, said Joseph Sellers, an attorney for the plaintiffs.
Harvard professor: Department is bastion of sexism January 21, 2007
Posted by C.A.R.D in Card, Citizens Against Racism and Discrimination, Discriminate, Discrimination, female, gender discrimination, Professor, Sexism, Sexist, Women.comments closed
A Harvard University professor who accused the school of gender discrimination has withdrawn her resignation, but said Thursday that the school’s landscape architecture department remains a bastion of sexism.Martha Schwartz, 56, complained that the department has never had a tenured female professor in its 106 years.
“I’m not pointing at any one person or any one thing, but this should have happened a long time ago,” Schwartz, who lives in London, said in a telephone interview.
Schwartz, who has taught at the university since 1992 while developing an international landscape architecture practice, submitted a letter of resignation last week.
“How can this lack of parity be allowed to exist in this day and age in any department within Harvard University, no matter how small the department may be?” she wrote in the letter to interim President Derek Bok.
Female bosses are more likely to discriminate against female employees January 2, 2007
Posted by C.A.R.D in Card, Discriminate, Discrimination, female, male, Sexism, woman.comments closed
FORGET “jobs for the boys”. Women bosses are significantly more likely than men to discriminate against female employees, research has suggested.
The study found that when presented with applications for promotion, women were more likely than men to assess the female candidate as less qualified than the male one.
They were also prone to mark down women’s prospects for promotion and to assess them as more controlling than men in their management style.
The findings, based on experiments carried out among more than 700 people, suggest that the “queen bee syndrome” of female rivalry in the workplace may sometimes be as important as sexism in holding back women’s careers.
Editorial: Sexism in video games November 29, 2006
Posted by C.A.R.D in Card, Citizens Against Racism and Discrimination, Discriminate, Discrimination, female, male, Sexism, Sexist, Women.comments closed
“The portrayal of women in video games is disgusting.”
That’s a quotation I’ve heard many times, from both men and women alike. The truth is that they have a point. Most of the time, female avatars are portrayed with large breasts, small waistlines and finely toned bodies all around. Commonly, the blame for this is put on the fact that “sex sells” and game development is a male dominated industry.
The theory is that the perception of a predominantly male audience wants to see gorgeous female toons when they’re playing a game. That’s why, so it’s said, that the game’s developers create unrealistic, fantasy women to populate their worlds. Let’s face it, when’s the last time you were playing a game and came across a female toon that was anything less than “ideal” unless it was a plot point?
Video games certainly aren’t a new addition to this pop-culture phenomenon. Look anywhere: television, magazines, billboards, etc. They all show us unrealistic representations that really can and do cause real women, young and old, to feel inferior and imperfect in society. This can lead to feelings of depression, eating disorders and any number of other things.
Tories deny sexism after female hopefuls rejected November 10, 2006
Posted by C.A.R.D in Card, Citizens Against Racism and Discrimination, female, Sexism, Sexist, woman, Women.comments closed
THE Conservative Party in Budleigh has defended its selection process after two male political novices were chosen to stand at next year’s district elections over two more experienced female candidates.
Each district ward has three members to represent it, and last Thursday evening Budleigh’s Conservative branch underwent a selection process to determine who would represent them in the Budleigh ward.
Of the six applicants – two female and four male – the three chosen were all male. They are sitting councillor and East Devon District Council portfolio holder for the environment Ray Franklin and two with no political experience – Malcolm Florey, former head of Biction College, and local businessman Steve Hall.
One of the two unsuccessful female candidates was a sitting Independent councillor since 2003, Lesley Roden, who had expressed a wish to cross the floor to the Conservative Party last summer.
The other candidate was Caz Sismore-Hunt, a Budleigh town councillor for 12 years and former town mayor.
Mrs Sismore-Hunt said: “I’m obviously disappointed that I didn’t get selected. It is curious that not a single woman has been selected to stand for the Conservative Party in the Budleigh Ward for 16 years.”
Lawsuits accuse Shoney’s of sexual discrimination October 28, 2006
Posted by C.A.R.D in Card, Citizens Against Racism and Discrimination, Discriminate, Discrimination, female, harassed, Sexual harassment, Women.comments closed
Eleven women are suing Shoney’s alleging sexual discrimination, accusing senior executives at the family-friendly chain of ignoring claims that four Nashville-area managers had groped and harassed female employees and waged a campaign to rid the company of older female workers.
The women, who include two teenagers hired as cashiers and several restaurant supervisors, say their bosses at Shoney’s restaurants in Hendersonville and Franklin, Ky., frequently made lewd comments, and propositioned and fondled them and other female employees.
Their treatment came amid a campaign to drive off older, less-attractive female workers, the women say in a series of lawsuits filed in U.S. District Court. They say that campaign fostered a climate in which explicit sexual harassment of employees by male and some female managers was tolerated. Meanwhile, several women in their 30s and 40s either were demoted or fired.
The campaign was devised by a vice president in Shoney’s Nashville headquarters and implemented by a half-dozen men and women midlevel executives working in Middle Tennessee and South Central Kentucky, the suits say.
The New Gender War October 3, 2006
Posted by C.A.R.D in Card, Citizens Against Racism and Discrimination, female, gender, male, Sexism, Sexist, TV.comments closed
Feminism has drawn attention to and fought against stereotypical and sexist portrayals of women in mass media, but new research shows that media portrayals of gender have largely done an about face in the past decade or so. There is a new “gender war” and the main target of discrimination is no longer women, according to research – it is men.
Gender studies have claimed that mass media portrayals and images are key influences that both reflect and shape society’s views of women and women’s self-identity. As well as attacking obvious sexist media portrayals such as page three girls and “girlie” magazines, feminists have challenged objectification, marginalisation, trivialisation and other negative portrayals of women in movies, advertising, TV drama and other media content. Their argument that such portrayals are damaging have won support from legislators and from many media professionals including film makers, advertising producers and editors.
Research shows that, while sexism against women remains, representations of women have evolved with less stereotypical portrayals and more women shown in heroic, successful, independent and sexually liberated roles such as in Buffy and the Vampire Slayer, Sex and the City and even in aggressive roles such as Kill Bill.
A 1995-96 study reported in a 2002 book, Media, Gender and Identity by media researcher David Gauntlett, found 43 per cent of major characters in TV shows were women – up from 18 per cent in 1992-93. The study reported that, on a character-by-character basis, females and males were equal in all criteria studied. Analysis of newspapers and magazines also has found portrayals of women improving – albeit there is still a way to go in some areas according to feminist scholars.
Until recently, gender theorists and media researchers have argued or assumed that media representations of men are predominantly positive, or at least unproblematic. Men have allegedly been shown in mass media as powerful, dominant, heroic, successful, respected, independent and in other positive ways conducive to men and boys maintaining a healthy self-identity and self-esteem.
However, this view has come under challenge over the past few years. John Beynon, a Welsh cultural studies academic, examined how masculinity was portrayed in the British quality press including The Times, The Guardian and The Sunday Times over a three-year period from 1999-2001 and in books such as Susan Faludi’s 2000 best-seller Stiffed: The Betrayal of Modern Man. Beynon concluded in his 2002 book, Masculinities and Culture, that men and masculinity were overwhelmingly presented negatively and as “something dangerous to be contained, attacked, denigrated or ridiculed, little else”.
Canadian authors, Paul Nathanson and Katherine Young in a controversial 2001 book, Spreading Misandry: The Teaching of Contempt for Men in Popular Culture reported widespread examples of “laughing at men, looking down on men, blaming men, de-humanising men, and demonising men” in modern mass media. They concluded: “… the worldview of our society has become increasingly both gynocentric (focused on the needs and problems of women) and misandric (focused on the evils and inadequacies of men)”.
Sexual harassment of men revealed July 18, 2006
Posted by C.A.R.D in Card, Citizens Against Racism and Discrimination, Discrimination, female, harassment, male, managers, Sexism, Sexual harassment, stereotype, survey.comments closed
A hidden world of sexual harassment, with female managers exploiting their power over men in the office, has been unveiled by a new government survey.
Despite the common stereotype of the male executive putting pressure on his secretary, two in five victims of sexual harassment are men, the study found.
A quarter of the men questioned in the Department of Trade and Industry survey reported being pestered by a client whom they also felt obliged to please.
According to the Equal Opportunities Commission, 8 per cent of calls to its sexual harassment helpline are from men, even though research shows male victims are less likely than women to complain. It insists that male complaints should be taken just as seriously. ‘It affects both women and men, causing stress, health problems and financial penalties when they leave their jobs to avoid it,’ said Jenny Watson, chair of the EOC.
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