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Labor and Employment Law

Vanderbilt University Law School

Gender discrimination

Publication Year

Articles 1 - 3 of 3

Full-Text Articles in Law

Salary History And Pay Parity, Jennifer Safstrom Oct 2019

Salary History And Pay Parity, Jennifer Safstrom

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Inquiries about a prospective applicant's salary history are controversial because of the role such inequities play in the broader gender pay equity debate. The use of prior salary to determine compensation can perpetuate pay discrimination for women, especially women of color, and lock them into cycles of underpayment when these inequities are carried over from job to job. Reliance on salary history perpetuates historical discrimination and is antithetical to the language and purpose of Title VII and the Equal Pay Act. The purpose of this paper is to critically analyze the legal reasoning relied upon to interpret these laws, especially …


Efficient Deterrence Of Workplace Sexual Harassment, Joni Hersch Jan 2019

Efficient Deterrence Of Workplace Sexual Harassment, Joni Hersch

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Although sexual harassment imposes costs on both victims and organizations, it is also costly for organizations to reduce sexual harassment. Legislation, education, training, and litigation have all been unsuccessful in eradicating workplace sexual harassment. My proposal is to establish financial incentives of sufficient magnitude to incentivize organizations to eliminate sexual harassment. The key challenge is in monetizing the harm caused by sexual harassment. I propose a new approach that draws on my research, which calculated the risk of sexual harassment by gender, industry, and age based on charges filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Using these risk measures, I …


Valuing The Risk Of Workplace Sexual Harassment, Joni Hersch Oct 2018

Valuing The Risk Of Workplace Sexual Harassment, Joni Hersch

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Using data on sexual harassment charges filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, I calculate the risk of sexual harassment by gender, industry, and age and establish that white females, but not nonwhite females, receive a compensating wage differential for exposure to a higher risk of sexual harassment. I use this risk premium to calculate the value of statistical harassment (VSH) in a manner analogous to the calculation of the value of statistical life (VSL). The VSH is around $7.6 million, about three-quarters of the size of the most-commonly cited levels of the VSL, and far above the maximum damages …