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

[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?