tagged w/ Gender Discrimination
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While the EU is about to ban gender pricing in Insurance, the one area where women pay less then men, calling it "morally unacceptable" - No one speaks up about how in every other respect women pay more then men simply because their women. >:(While the EU is about to ban gender pricing in Insurance, the one area where women... more
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Scientists are a famously anonymous lot, but few can match in the depths of her perverse and unmerited obscurity the 20th-century mathematical genius Amalie Noether.
Albert Einstein called her the most “significant” and “creative” female mathematician of all time, and others of her contemporaries were inclined to drop the modification by sex. She invented a theorem that united with magisterial concision two conceptual pillars of physics: symmetry in nature and the universal laws of conservation. Some consider Noether’s theorem, as it is now called, as important as Einstein’s theory of relativity; it undergirds much of today’s vanguard research in physics, including the hunt for the almighty Higgs boson. Yet Noether herself remains utterly unknown, not only to the general public, but to many members of the scientific community as well.
(click on the link to read the complete article)Scientists are a famously anonymous lot, but few can match in the depths of her... more
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More than 200 Indian girls whose names mean “unwanted” in Hindi have chosen new names for a fresh start in life.
A central Indian district held a renaming ceremony Saturday that it hopes will give the girls new dignity and help fight widespread gender discrimination that gives India a skewed gender ratio, with far more boys than girls.More than 200 Indian girls whose names mean “unwanted” in Hindi have... more
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This week's edition of the Ironic News Report makes you wonder! We also take on Walmart and Climate Deniers as we juxtapose Al Gore and Current's 24 hr's of Reality with the media climate of unreality over at Fox's Deny-a-nator 2000. Hosted by comedian and activist Julianna Forlano.
If this is your first time:
The Ironic News Report is a satirical news parody that skewers politics and current events.
We are big fans of Current and are happy to post here and hear back from the community!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJdzd4VdQ1Q&feature=autoplay&list=HL1316877653&lf=mh_lolz&index=2&playnext=1This week's edition of the Ironic News Report makes you wonder! We also take on... more
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WOMENSENEWS)--One of the best analysis pieces this week about the big rebuff by the Supreme Court to Wal-Mart's female workers came from Lila Shapiro at the Huffington Post.
In recent years, class actions have been employed by workers--particularly lower-wage workers--as a substitute for the force that collective bargaining wielded in an era of broader union representation, Shapiro wrote in "Walmart: Too Big to Sue."
"By banding together in large-scale lawsuits, workers have effectively organized themselves into unified, powerful voices, gaining leverage in negotiations with management," Shapiro said.
In this case, a large national voice of female workers was found to be too big to certify as a class, since they were spread out among as many as 3,400 stores and worked for a wide variety of managers.
Wal-Mart is the country's largest private employer. Apparently, once a company reaches such stature, its workers cannot claim common ground, even if the profits they help generate flow toward the same bottom line.
"In a sense the court has said, the banks we have were too big to fail, with Wal-Mart we have too big to sue," Ken Jacobs, chair of the Labor Center at University of California-Berkeley, was quoted as saying by Shapiro. "Basically if you're saying that the overall corporation is off the hook for what local managers are doing, that removes the incentive for corporate headquarters to really pay attention and to set up structures to make sure you do have the law being followed."
That's why the 5-4 decision is being widely seen as so wounding to wide swaths of workers; so favorable for the relatively few who wield corporate clout.
Sensing Repercussions
Almost immediately, women in other large class actions were sensing the repercussions. Costco Wholesale, for example, may be able to block women accusing it of gender bias from suing as a group because of the ruling, Bloomberg News reported June 23.
Linda Basch and Elizabeth L. Grayer decried the decision in a June 23 joint column in the Star Ledger and reminded readers of how many other underpaid women in the United States were, broadly speaking, represented by this suit.
Women are still paid 77 cents to every dollar a man earns," they wrote. "And the cost of pay discrimination to women and their families has been estimated to average $500,000 over a lifetime, and as much as $2 million or more for professional women."
The High Court had no precedent for coming down so heavily on a group of plaintiffs. It was simply being asked to rule on whether the women could certify as a class, not whether they could win the case.
"For 45 years, since Congress approved the criteria for class actions, the threshold for certification of a class has been low, with good reason because certification is merely the first step in a suit," The New York Times editorialized on June 20. "Members of a potential class have had to show that they were numerous, had questions of law or fact in common and had representatives with typical claims who would protect the interests of the class."
That's why the majority opinion, written by Justice Antonin Scalia, is considered so discouraging to class actions in general.
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Fights Yet to Come
The justices, meanwhile, said nothing about the women's underlying charge of bias on pay and promotion. Those fights are yet to come; possibly store-by-store and region-by-region, according to a plaintiff's lawyer quoted by The New York Times.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote the dissenting opinion and was joined by Justice Stephen Breyer and the two other women on the court: Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.
Ginsburg would have allowed the Wal-Mart women to proceed with their case under another class-action category. She spoke out against the court disqualifying the women "at the starting gate," according to a story in The New York Times. She also cited the low proportion of women in management--30 percent--given the female-majority work force.
Could managers with a broad leeway in determining who gets paid what and who gets promoted all be subject to the same male bias? Ginsburg didn't think it could be ruled out. "Managers like all humankind, may be prey to biases of which they are unaware," she wrote.
This enormous, time-consuming, 10-year case is likely to sensitize managers far beyond the walls of Wal-Mart stores to gender bias. But whether they decide to change anything could depend on the multiple law suits still to come, brought by individual women and smaller groups of workers.
Lead plaintiff Betty Dukes and other women are vowing to push on.
Women's advocacy groups have protested the decision, according to Ms. Magazine's Feminist Wire. On June 21, many rallied outside the Supreme Court and rallies were held in other cities, including San Francisco, Boston, New York and Philadelphia.
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http://www.womensenews.org/story/in-the-courts/110624/wal-mart-ruling-puts-big-chill-female-workers
Read the full weekly news wrap up here.
Corinna Barnard is editor of Women's eNews.WOMENSENEWS)--One of the best analysis pieces this week about the big rebuff by the... more
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A Florida woman executive is suing her former employer for gender discrimination, claiming she was told to hide her large breasts because they were too large and were distracting to other employees.
Amy-Erin Blakely claims she endured six years of harassment about the size of her chest at the Devereux Foundation, the country’s largest not-for-profit provider of children’s mental health services in Orlando, Florida.
The former executive said she filed two internal grievances with the company but instead of receiving help, she was terminated the next day. “No woman should ever be subjected to such sexist and derogatory remarks,” said Amy-Erin Blakely.
Blakely said she’s a victim of discrimination in the workplace. The 43-year-old former assistant executive director said she was told other employees were distracted by the size of her breasts and that she was too sensual for further promotion.
More: More: http://www.theblogismine.com/2010/11/12/woman-sues-ex-employer-for-being-asked-to-hide-her-breast/A Florida woman executive is suing her former employer for gender discrimination,... more
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Is Debrahlee Lorenzana Too HOT to Work??? Fired From Citibank For Being Sexy…
BusinessInsider.Com
Courtney Comstock
Jun. 2, 2010
Debrahlee Lorenzana is filing a lawsuit against Citibank because they fired her, she says, for the strangest reason: she’s too hot.
She’s 5’5”, 125 pounds and well, you’ve seen her photo.
Is Debrahlee Lorenzana Too HOT To Work??? …Click here for 17 PHOTO SLIDESHOW..http://ctpatriot1970.wordpress.com/2010/06/02/is-debrahlee-lorenzana-too-hot-to-work-fired-from-citibank-for-being-sexy-photo-slideshow/.
Her bosses told her that “as a result of the shape of her figure, such clothes were purportedly ‘too distracting’ for her male colleagues and supervisors to bear,” she says.Is Debrahlee Lorenzana Too HOT to Work??? Fired From Citibank For Being Sexy…... more
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A sharply divided federal appeals court has exposed retail giant Wal-Mart to billions of dollars in legal damages after it ruled that a massive class action lawsuit alleging gender discrimination over pay for female workers can go to trial.A sharply divided federal appeals court has exposed retail giant Wal-Mart to billions... more
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