WAL-MART FACES a class-action suit by a million female employees who say they are the victims of sex discrimination. This may become the largest employment discrimination suit in U.S. history. The case is fueled by two stunningly wrongheaded assumptions: that government should have any say in compensation and promotion and that women are the same as men.

If the case proceeds, it will be difficult, if not impossible, for a company as large as Wal-Mart to disprove that it engages in sex discrimination. After all, men and women are different and any  large employer would necessarily show some pattern of sex discrimination. The initial suit was filed in 2001 by six former and current female hourly workers and managers who accused Wal-Mart of a pattern of denying women workers equal pay and opportunities. The women alleged they made less than men doing the same jobs, although they had equal or more experience. Others said men were favored for promotions into managerial positions. Hundreds of thousands of female employees have since jumped on board the case, hoping to ride this horse to the races along with the lawyers who have magnanimously sought them out.

Wal-Mart could not win if it showed that it does not arbitrarily discriminate but discriminates based on real sex differences, taking into account the work interruptions women experience due to motherhood and sickness or the desire of male managers to work with other men or the authority a male manager projects or the tendency of a woman to focus more on relationships than the task itself.  Sex differences don’t exist, and so Wal-Mart could not prove these represent something real. And, if Wal-Mart does not arbitrarily discriminate, why would it discriminate against women? What the plaintiffs are alleging is nothing less than a pattern of arbitrary male hostility. If they win, that’s what they will successfully argue. And they have a very good chance of proving it because any recognition that women employees may be, as a class, different from male employees is forbidden.

But even if Wal-Mart was insensitive and unfair, what business is that of the government’s? Why should the government determine whom anyone hires, fires or promotes? If Wal-Mart loses its case, corporations will be forced to engage in more unfair discrimination, not less, as they strive to favor women over men and to create the impossible: a work environment unaffected by sex differences and natural preferences.  Socialist control is inevitable in a world without men and a world without women.

                                               — Comments —

Jesse Powell writes:

The Supreme Court has had a tendency to rule against big class action lawsuits alleging gender discrimination precisely because gender discrimination is supposed to be a matter of an individual woman being discriminated against for reasons that are not job related. Let’s hope the Supreme Court will not depart from tradition and maintain the idea that gender discrimination has to be based on non-work related issues in order to be considered illegal. 

District Judge Martin J. Jenkins, in 2004, in his opinion regarding the claim of gender discrimination at Wal-Mart, had some pretty Orwellian things to say.

The opinion he issued, supporting the claim that the female employees at Wal-Mart should be treated as a class, has a whole section titled “Statistical Evidence of Discrimination.” In the part of the opinion headed “Gender Stereotyping” it is quite clear that a totalitarian minded effort to outlaw and punish “Gender Stereotyping”, meaning the practice of recognizing and acting upon the reality that men and women are different, is being advocated. 

Parts of the “Gender Stereotyping” section reads:

 “Plaintiffs also rely on the expert testimony of Dr. Bielby to support their contention that gender stereotyping is likely to exist at Wal-Mart, and that it persists to the present day.” 

“Employers create gender barriers, however, when they allow stereotypes to affect personnel decisions.” 

“With respect to Wal-Mart in particular, Dr. Bielby confirms that managers make decisions with considerable discretion and little oversight. He concludes that subjective decisions such as these, as well as discretionary wage decisions, are likely to be biased ‘unless they are assessed in a systematic and valid manner, with clear criteria and careful attention to the integrity of the decision-making process.” 

“On the whole, Dr. Bielby recognizes that Wal-Mart has increased its emphasis on diversity issues in the past few years, but because the company has not translated that emphasis into practical and effective measures, there has been little actual impact on gender differentials in pay and promotion.”

Kevin Stay writes:

You state, “Why should the government determine whom anyone hires, fires or promotes?” How comfortable are you with where that line of thinking inevitably leads? So called “class” discrimination based on ethnicity, religion, schooling? Using strictly a dictionary definition of discrimination such populations are actually distinct and do actually have a mean set of attributes which may or may not be desirable for an area of a company such as management. (It is a “dirty secret” in Las Vegas the casinos actively seek out Mormons for money handling positions precisely because of their religion plus there is a significant population of them living there due partly to the relative proximity of Salt Lake City.) 

Jesse Powell responded, “…discrimination is supposed to be a matter of an individual… …being discriminated against for reasons that are not job related.” In other words, at least historically in this nation, discriminating between population groups with real differences that do matter in the workplace had been acceptable and even recognized as desirable in successful organizations. Bigotry, however, is not acceptable as has been made clear by the Supreme Court. An individual who is in all other ways equally qualified for a position cannot be passed over solely because they are part of a group which itself tends to be unqualified for such a position. 

And thus we come to the nub of it all; if the government has no business involving itself in company class discrimination practices does it have any business involving itself in individual practices of bigotry? “We recognize you as an outlier in just about every way in your population group and as being more qualified in all relevant areas than any other applicant, but solely because your skin is black there is no way this company would ever promote you to a management position.” Speaking solely for myself, while I am uncomfortable with any company acting in that way, I am even more uncomfortable with the government telling them they cannot.

Laura writes:

The government effort to stamp out indvidual bigotry only leads to new forms of institutionalized bigotry, the routine preference of certain groups over others. Minority contractors tend to want to hire minorities and that kind of discrimination is already permitted. When a company must hire a certain number of women, it will obviously reject some male candidates purely because they are male.  Anti-discriminations laws don’t prevent discrimination; they just prevent certain kinds of discrimination. Business should be free to exercise any preferences they wish.

What about people who are short or people who are ugly? They are routinely discriminated against. Government can only police all forms of bigotry by taking over the private sector. 

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