Law and Gender Commons^™

The New Labor Market For Lawyers: Will Female Lawyers Still Earn Less?, Joni Hersch

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The article examines the persistent gender pay gap in the legal profession, despite women's increased representation, and identifies key factors contributing to this disparity. It highlights how structural and societal factors, such as work hours, family responsibilities, and discrimination, play significant roles. The analysis suggests that while younger cohorts show signs of narrowing the gap, systemic barriers and biases continue to affect women's earnings and career advancement. The study underscores the need for policies addressing these inequities to ensure equal opportunities and pay.

Litigation Narratives: Why Jensen V. Ellerth Didn't Change Sexual Harassment Law, But Still Has A Story Worth Telling, Melissa Hart

Publications

No abstract provided.

Sex Plus Age Discrimination: Protecting Older Women Workers, Nicole Buonocore Porter

Faculty Publications

There is little doubt that sexism and ageism still exist. To remedy these "isms," there are laws to protect both women and older workers from discrimination in the workplace, namely Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 ("Title VII"), which prohibits sex discrimination as well as discrimination based on many other protected categories, and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 ("ADEA"), which prohibits age discrimination. Despite these protections, an older woman cannot bring a claim based on the fact that she feels she was discriminated against because she is an older woman. In other words, her …

After Ellerth: The Tangible Employment Action In Sexual Harassment Analysis, Susan Grover

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

In this Article, Professor Grover argues that courts too readily allow employers to avoid vicarious liability for supervisors' unlawful sexual harassment of subordinates. The Article explores the breadth of the affirmative defense first introduced in the Supreme Court's 1998 cases of Faragher v. Boca Raton and Burlington Indus., Inc. v. Ellerth. That defense clears an employer of liability for a supervisor's unlawful sexual harassment if (a) the employer exercised reasonable care to prevent and correct promptly any sexually harassing behavior, and (b) the plaintiff employee unreasonably failed to take advantage of any preventive or corrective opportunities provided by the …

Parental-Status Employment Discrimination: A Wrong In Need Of A Right?, Peggie R. Smith

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Article evaluates strategies to challenge employment discrimination based on parental status. Specifically, it examines proposals put forth by some commentators to establish parental status as a protected class. While such a suggestion is attractive, the Article argues that it ultimately offers few practical advantages and remains wedded to a limited conception of equality, requiring only that employment decisions not reflect differences based on parenthood. Consequently, such a strategy would satisfy anti-discrimination legislation so long as both men and women with parental obligations are equally ill-treated. The Article concludes that a shift in perspective from gender to parental status will …

Reply To Martha Nussbaum And Ian Hacking, Edward D. Stein

Articles

The essays by Martha Nussbaum and Ian Hacking both raise important issues about the some of the central themes of The Mismeasure of Desire and it is a pleasure and an honor to have such careful, significant and interdisciplinary thinkers engage my ideas. In this brief reply, I address some of their challenges.

Women And Pension Reform: Economic Insecurity And Old Age, 35 J. Marshall L. Rev. 673 (2002), Lorraine Schmall

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Customer Is Always Right… Not! Employer Liability For Third Party Sexual Harassment, Lea B. Vaughn

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This article will ask a series of questions. What is third party sexual harassment? Under what conditions does it occur? Does it differ in any significant respects from traditional notions of sexual harassment? Should those differences, if any, make a difference in the way that the legal system addresses third party harassment? And indeed, should the problem be addressed solely through the legal system? What might an employer do to alleviate sexual harassment of this type?

"Just Like One Of The Family": Domestic Violence Paradigms And Combating On-The-Job Violence Against Household Workers In The United States, Kristi L. Graunke

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This Article argues that the immense problem of on-the-job abuse experienced by domestic workers demands a multifaceted plan of attack. The proposed responses specifically draw upon the capacities, strengths, and resources of women, particularly comparatively privileged women, as both activists and employers of domestic workers. By describing the circumstances of domestic work in the United States from the nation's inception to the present, Part I demonstrates the prevalence and intractability of on-the-job physical and sexual abuse and argues that other women, as employers of domestic workers, have historically played a complex role in participating in, condoning, or failing to acknowledge …

Does Ec Pregnancy And Maternity Legislation Create Equal Opportunities For Women In The Ec Labor Market? The European Court Of Justice's Interpretation Of The Ec Pregnancy Directive In Boyle And Lewen, Petra Foubert

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This article discusses the EC's legal accommodation of pregnancy in the workplace and the interpretation thereof by the European Court of Justice. The leitmotiv is the question to what extent such accommodation enhances women's position in the labor market. The suspicion being that, in a well-intentioned attempt to fight discrimination of women, the EC institutions entrench gender discrimination. In other words, in their attempt to fight sex discrimination (by accommodating pregnancy), the EC often places women in a position that confirms the traditional perception of women as childbearers and caregivers.

Job Segregation, Gender Blindness, And Employee Agency Symposium: Law, Labor, And Gender - New Perspectives On Labor And Gender, Tracy E. Higgins

Faculty Scholarship

Almost forty years after the enactment of Title VII, women's struggle for equality in the workplace continues. Although Title VII was intended to "break[] down old patterns of segregation and hierarchy," the American workplace remains largely gender-segregated. Indeed, more than one-third of all women workers are employed in occupations in which the percentage of women exceeds 80%. Even in disciplines in which women have made gains, top status (and top paying) jobs remain male-dominated while the lower status jobs are filled by women. This pattern of gender segregation, in turn, accounts for a substantial part of the persistent wage gap …

Equal Protection Victory, Arthur S. Leonard

Other Publications

No abstract provided.

The Customer Is Always Right . . . Not!: Employer Liability For Third Party Sexual Harassment, Lea B. Vaughn

Articles

This article will ask a series of questions. What is third party sexual harassment? Under what conditions does it occur? Does it differ in any significant respects from traditional notions of sexual harassment? Should those differences, if any, make a difference in the way that the legal system addresses third party harassment? And indeed, should the problem be addressed solely through the legal system? What might an employer do to alleviate sexual harassment of this type?

The thesis of this article is that third party sexual harassment is a prevalent form of harassment that the legal system does not currently …

Evaluating The Sex Discrimination Argument For Lesbian And Gay Rights, Edward D. Stein

Articles

The sex discrimination argument for lesbian and gay rights analyzes laws that discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation in terms of sex discrimination. For example, sodomy laws that prohibit only same-sex sexual activities are analyzed as discriminating on the basis of sex because they prohibit women from doing something men are permitted to do, that is, have sex with women. This argument has been championed by some scholars and litigators, and it has persuaded some judges. Edward Stein shows that there are sociological, theoretical, moral, and practical problems facing the sex discrimination argument. He suggests that there are better …

Employer Liability For Sexual Harassment - Normative, Descriptive, And Doctrinal Interactions: A Reply To Professors Beiner And Bisom-Rapp, Linda Hamilton Krieger

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

Using Evidence Of Women's Stories In Sexual Harassment Cases, Theresa M. Beiner

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

Fixing Watches With Sledgehammers: The Questionable Embrace Of Employee Sexual Harassment Training By The Legal Profession, Susan Bisom-Rapp

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Attachment Gap: Employment Discrimination Law, Women's Cultural Caregiving, And The Limits Of Economic And Liberal Legal Theory, Laura T. Kessler

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Title VII has prohibited employment discrimination on the basis of pregnancy since 1978, when Congress passed the Pregnancy Discrimination Act ("PDA"), but it does not require employers to recognize women's caregiving obligations beyond the immediate, physical events of pregnancy and childbirth. The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 ("FMLA ") also does little more than provide job security to some relatively privileged women in the case of childbirth. Neither of these statutes, which constitute the bulk of the United States' maternity and parental leave policies, provides for the most common employment leave needs of caregivers, who by all measures …

Law As A Tool For A Sexual Revolution: Israel's Prevention Of Sexual Harassment Law- 1998, Tzili Mor

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Discussion of the newly enacted law will outline the theoretical underpinnings and their effect on the resultant version (Part III), followed by the legislative history, including the Knesset and the public debate surrounding the bill (Part IV), and the impact of that debate on the final outcome of the law (Part V). Part VI will pay particular attention to the innovative approach of the law as a whole and some of the revolutionary specific provisions within. In particular, the legislative framework will be considered in the context of a nation founded and conducted on traditional religious tenets of Judaism. Finally, …

Next Challenge In Sexual Harassment Reform: Racial Disparity, The Panel One: Gender, Race, And Sexuality: Historical Themes And Emerging Issues In Women's Rights Law, Tanya K. Hernandez

Faculty Scholarship

In order to do my homework in discussing both a tribute to women's lawyering and activism and also discuss emerging issues, I am going to focus on sexual harassment.

Conflating Scope Of Right With Standard Of Review: The Supreme Court's Strict Scrutiny Of Congressional Efforts To Enforce The Fourteenth Amendment, Melissa Hart

Publications

No abstract provided.

Marital Status Discrimination: A Proposal For Title Vii Protection, Nicole Buonocore Porter

Faculty Publications

Marital status is not one of the protected categories of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the federal antidiscrimination statute that governs discrimination in employment. This Article will argue that to avoid the types of inequities caused by marital status discrimination, it is necessary for Title VII to protect employees against marital status discrimination.

The more common claims of marital status discrimination are claims that an employer's no-spouse rule or antinepotism policy violates the state antidiscrimination statute. [These policies have two significant problems.] First of all, many courts fail to look at the widely disparate consequences of …

Bitch V. Whore: The Current Trend To Define The Requirements Of An Actionable Hostile Environment Claim In Verbal Sexual Harassment Cases, 33 J. Marshall L. Rev. 465 (2000), Jamie Lynn Cook

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Silencing Speech In The Workplace: Re-Examining The Use Of Specific Speech Injunctive Relief For Title Vii Hostile Environment Work Claims, 34 J. Marshall L. Rev. 321 (2000), Sonali Das

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Sexual Harassment And Racial Disparity: The Mutual Construction Of Gender And Race, Tanya K. Hernandez

Faculty Scholarship

For a number of years, commentators have proffered anecdotal evidence to suggest that women of color figure prominently as sexual harassment plaintiffs. Until recently, a systematic statistical analysis of women's experiences of sexual harassment by race was largely unavailable. For the first time, this Article comprehensively analyzes Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) sexual harassment charge statistics, by looking at data from the last seven years along with Lexis-Nexis and Westlaw electronic reports of sexual harassment complaints for the last twenty years. What immediately becomes apparent in this statistical analysis of sexual harassment charges in the United States is the overrepresentation …

Exercising The Right To Public Accommodations: The Debate Over Single-Sex Health Clubs, Miriam A. Cherry

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

Recently, the debate over single-sex health clubs gained national attention when a patent attorney, James Foster, sued for admission to Healthworks, a Massachusetts all-women's health club. One day in 1996, Foster entered the club, which was located close to his Boston condominium, and asked for a tour and an application for membership. The club employees, however, refused him a tour, informing him that Healthworks did not admit men. Shortly thereafter, Foster filed a discrimination claim with the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination contending that Healthworks had violated the Massachusetts public accommodations statute. He won at the administrative hearing, and Healthworks …

Career Paths For Women And Minorities In The New Millennium, Laura Kingsley Hong

Buffalo Women's Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Toward A Global Critical Feminist Vision: Domestic Work And The Nanny Tax Debate, Taunya Lovell Banks

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Essence Of Her Womanhood: Defining The Privacy Rights Of Women Prisoners And The Employment Rights Of Women Guards , Rebecca Jurado

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

Bibliographical Essay: Women And The Legal Profession , Cynthia Grant Bowman

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.