Wage Discrimination Gets a Boost

[astra_nomer]

The Supreme Court has decided to make it easier for employers to discriminate against women. I guess the wage gap doesn't bother them in the slightest. Perhaps it's only coincidence that this comes soon after I read this article* about pretty blatant sex discrimination against an assistant professor at UCLA, where "it was discovered during court proceedings that her UCLA department had a secret reserve of money that they used to supplement the salaries of male faculty members only." So if your employer does something behind your back, and you don't find out about it until more than 180 days afterwards, does that mean you don't get to file suit against them? If your employer systematically gave you smaller raises than your male collegues over the past 19 years, it's not a valid claim? Oh right, that is what they ruled.

I used to be pretty naive about sex discrimination - I never really experienced it myself, so I thought. Up through grad school, I felt like I was treated pretty much the same as my male cohorts. Certainly my grades showed that I was as good as them. But as the criteria for success becomes more and more subjective, I'm feeling it more and more. It's nothing truly blatent, just the thousands of tiny paper cuts ("You'll have no problem getting a job, you're a woman." "Did having children in grad school make you take longer?") that bleed you to death. To have the Supreme Court, of all entities, make it harder for a woman to fight discrimination, that makes me all the more paranoid about my chances for success.

What with this and the "partial birth abortion" rulings, it seems pretty clear that the majority of the Supreme Court hates women. I share Ruth Bader Ginsburg's frustration and anger. The end of Bush's term in office and the accompanying chance to rectify the makeup of the Supreme Court can't come soon enough for me.

*seen at Bitch PhD

Comments

[ayekamn.livejournal.com]

I have experienced sexism at the extreme end of being told by two advisors (one in a summer program, another was my first undergrads advisor) that female undergrads in astronomy are usually just "House-wife Astronomers." i.e., they just get married and leave the field. They both used the same phrase, so apparently it's a common term. The sexism exhibited by my undergraduate advisor was so blatant, it was almost cartoon-like.

But I've also experienced the other more intrusive and icky side of sexism with having a graduate advisor who gave preference to his male students because they were "his buddies" and he no doubt saw himself in them. No matter what they said, they were treated as Brilliant, and no matter what me or his other female grad student said, we were treated like we were Idiots. I learned very quickly to not speak up in his group because any idea that I had got immediately shot down without thought. He is completely unprofessional with his students and has made some pretty sexist comments in the past, although he would never admit that he treats his male & female students differently. It's a lot more nebulous when you're giving "your friends" breaks, and "your friends" happen to only be your male students.

I'm not even going to go into the Nature paper he "gave" to his main male undergrad "buddy". I bitched about that enough in my LJ when it happened.

[ayekamn.livejournal.com]

I perhaps used "too many" "quotes" in that "comment".

[astra-nomer.livejournal.com]

Yikes! It seems pretty telling that nearly every woman scientist I know has at least one anecdote about encountering mysogyny among fellow scientists. Not always as extreme as this, but still.

[lokiect.livejournal.com]

every time I read something about this, the ruling itself strikes me as illegal and I want to have it challenged in court :(

[astra-nomer.livejournal.com]

I think they basically ruled on a technicality, something to do with the wording of the law. But it's no less disappointing for that.

[capsicumanuum.livejournal.com]

Sadly, the odds that Congress will amend the law to fix the technicality are slim to none. I can't decide if I'm actually a cynical bitch, or if the world really does suck that much.

[capsicumanuum.livejournal.com]

The thing that pisses me off is that it's being spun in the news as a "fairness" issue for the companies, that it's not "right" for the current management/CEO/etc to be held liable for something their predecessors did. Which is just so much bullshit I don't even know where to start.

No, that's a lie. I'll start with environmental laws that say that if toxic waste is discovered on your property YOU are responsible for cleaning it up even if a previous owner was the dumper. That's why brown-field sites are so damn hard to sell. Then move on to the fact that no one who is currently in the workplace started their job during the era when sexism was both socially condoned and legal. Everyone, even the woman who was first discriminated nineteen years ago, started their jobs long after we bloody well made it clear that women are people too and that it is not okay to discriminate on the basis of gender. So the whole "But my predecessor didn't know any better" argument is bunk. The people who made these sorts of decisions knew good and well that what they are doing is wrong, or at least, they certainly ought to.

Gah. This makes me so angry I could spit.

[astra-nomer.livejournal.com]

The environmental thing is a good analogy. You can't just keep passing the buck, people need to be held accountable. And really, 19 years ago? 1988? It's not like it was unusual for women to work then. And the really troubling thing about the ruling is that it limits claims to 180 days, which makes it pretty much impossible to sue based on an established pattern of bad behavior.

Yeah, I hear you with the anger.

[76trombones.livejournal.com]

I'm confused. Were there claims against the current management personally, or just against the companies?