Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Court: Wal-Mart gender pay lawsuit can go to trial

http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/04/26/walmart.suit/index.html?hpt=Sbin

I picked this article because this is an example of of how there is discrimination in the workplace still today. Men and women should be able to make the same amount of money as long as they have the same experience. One should not make more than the other in the same position. I think the women who did not make the same wages as the men in the same positions should be entitled to back pay. One's gender should not have anything to do with how much they make or how far they can excel in a company. The world today is supposed to encourage ALL people to excel in their given fields and make it an equal opportunity employment. That is where Wal-mart went wrong. They have equal opportunity employment on all their advertisements as well as the application, so the obviously are not practicing what they preach.

2 comments:

  1. Interesting! I wish they had given more detail about the grievances of the plaintiffs -- all it says is: "The lawsuit alleges that the company's 'strong, centralized structure fosters or facilitates gender stereotyping and discrimination.'" and "The workers bringing suit also say women make up more than 70 percent of Wal-Mart's hourly work force but in the past decade made up less than one-third of its store management."
    Based on these statements, it seems hard to single out Walmart as being different than most workplaces, where the percentages of women in management remain quite low, though rapidly increasing over the past decades. For examples check out the link below, which contains lots of statistics on women in management. Taking just one example, they cite a law firm in the United States with one of the highest percentages of women partners among large law firms; it has approximately 17 percent of partners and 40 percent of associates. (I don't know what the overall percentage of women in the lawfirm is).

    http://www.ilo.org/dyn/gender/docs/RES/292/f267981337

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  2. I think that this article should also include how many women have applied for management positions and were turned down because a male was hired. Even though I am 100% for equality, I think a lot of people will overlook some aspects of this case...which includes the hiring process and how many women have applied themselves and applied for the positions. It seems that once people hear that there may be an inequality dispute taking place, they automatically take the side of the 'people' and not the corporation. (in this case, Wal-Mart is the corporation) I, for one, would like to see the statistics…which is also how the court will decide this case.

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