Law and Gender Commons^™

Some Of Them Still Don't Get It: Hostile Work Environment Litigation In The Lower Courts, Eric Schnapper

Articles

This Article describes how the courts of appeals have decided sexual harassment cases in the five years since Harris v. Forklift Systems, Inc., 510 US 17 (1993). In some circuits, events have unfolded largely as Justice Scalia anticipated: the trier of fact—ordinarily a jury—applies the hostile work environment standard announced in Meritor and elaborated upon in Harris.

From Office Ladies To Women Warriors?: The Effect Of The Eeol On Japanese Women, Jennifer S. Fan

Articles

In this Article, Jennifer Fan argues that existing laws in Japan do not adequately protect working women from sex discrimination. Specifically, Fan examines the Equal Employment Opportunity Law (EEOL), a law designed to prevent discrimination against women in the workplace, and concludes that the EEOL is little more than a paper tiger that preserves the status quo. After briefly discussing the legal sources of protection for working women in Japan before the passage of the EEOL, Fan examines the creation of the EEOL, its substantive provisions, and its legal impact. Through her analysis of recent sexual harassment cases in light …

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.

Testing The Naalc's Dispute Resolution System: A Case Study , John P. Isa

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

Naked Feminism: The Unionization Of The Adult Entertainment Industry, Holly J. Wilmet

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

The Gender Wage Gap: Searching For Equality In A Global Economy, Lucy B. Bednarek

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

No abstract provided.

The North American Agreement Of Labor Cooperation And Its Effects On Women Working In Mexican Maquiladoras , Nicole L. Grimm

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Analysis Of People Of The State Of New York, Buffalo Gyn Womenservices, Planned Parenthood Of Rochester/Syracuse Region, Et. Al. V. Operation Rescue National, Et. Al., Lucinda Finley

Buffalo Women's Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Oncale V. Sundowner Offshore Services: Will Sexual Identity Continue To Regulate Recovery In Title Vii Same-Sex Sexual Harassment Cases?, Saul Greenstein

Circles: Buffalo Women's Journal of Law and Social Policy

No abstract provided.

Human Rights Of Women In Central And Eastern Europe, Julie Mertus

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

Assesing The Family And Medical Leave Act In Terms Of Gender Equality, Work/Family Balance, And The Needs Of Children, Angie K. Young

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

While recognizing that parental leave is only one aspect of the FMLA, this Article concentrates on the provision allowing leave to parents in order to care for their children. Before analyzing the FMLA in detail, it is helpful to explore what aims a parental-leave policy should have. The purpose of this Article is to propose and defend three goals that parental-leave legislation should strive to meet: equality of career opportunities for men and women, the right to participate in both work and family, and meeting the needs of children. After articulating what parental-leave legislation should aim for in theory, this …

Not-So-Arbitrary Arbitration: Using Title Vii Disparate Impact Analysis To Invalidate Employment Contracts That Discriminate, Miriam A. Cherry

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

On May 20, 1996, three women filed a sexual harassment and discrimination lawsuit against the Wall Street investment firm Smith Barney. Later joined by twenty additional women, the plaintiffs alleged that Smith Barney failed to hire and promote women, created a hostile work environment, and discriminated on the basis of pregnancy and marital status. The lawsuit quickly gained widespread publicity, most notably for its accusation that the former manager of the Garden City, New York, branch had established a fraternity-like "boom-boom room" in the office basement where female employees were either excluded or harassed if allowed to enter. On …

Compensating Differentials For Gender-Specific Job Injury Risks, Joni Hersch

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Women have largely been excluded from analyses of compensating differentials for job risk since they are predominantly employed in safer, white-collar occupations. New data reveal that their injury experience is considerable. One-third of the total injury and illness cases with days away from work accrue to female workers. Adjusted for employment, women are 71 percent as likely as men to experience an injury or illness. As one would predict on theoretical grounds, these risks generate compensating differentials. Based on gender-specific injury incidence rates for both industry and occupation, I find strong evidence of compensating wage differentials for the job risk …

The Problem That Has No Name, Omi Morgenstern Leissner

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The article examines how naming practices, deeply rooted in patriarchal societies, influence women's identity, autonomy, and societal status. It argues that traditional naming conventions, such as women adopting their husbands' surnames, reflect broader power dynamics that marginalize women and erase their individuality. The analysis highlights the legal, cultural, and psychological implications of these practices and advocates for self-naming as a form of resistance and empowerment.

Gender Sex Agency And Discrimination: A Reply To Professor Abrams, Katherine M. Franke

Faculty Scholarship

According to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, sexual harassment is the fastest-growing area of employment discrimination. In fact, the annual number of sexual harassment complaints filed with the EEOC has more than doubled in the last six years. No one, or at least no one who has given this problem her serious attention, can deny that workplace sexual harassment is a grave problem and that it significantly impedes women's entrance into many sectors of the wage labor market.

Notwithstanding these impressive numbers, sexual harassment legal doctrine remains remarkably undertheorized – particularly by the Supreme Court. For these and other reasons, …

Race, Gender, And The Law In The Twenty-First Century Workplace: Some Preliminary Observations, Susan P. Sturm

Faculty Scholarship

This article seeks to move beyond the debate between informal and formal legal regulation. Both approaches reflect essential but limited components of a legal regulatory regime. Neither approach adequately responds to the simultaneous challenges of changing organizational structure, racial and gender dynamics, and market-driven demands for flexibility and adaptiveness. The next step requires that we take account of the critiques of formality and informality. This requires embracing the challenge of developing new forms of legal regulation that treat organizational decision makers and incentive structures explicitly as part of the legal regulatory regime. In this view, law consists of a set …

"Supervisor" Hostile Environment Sexual Harassment Claims, Liability Insurance, And The Trend Towards Negligence, Amanda D. Smith

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

A lack of settled standards for determining liability in supervisor hostile environment sexual harassment lawsuits combined with similar uncertainty in the context of employer liability insurance coverage has resulted in increased litigation in this area. This Note argues that the current predominant standard in the employer liability context, which is based on negligence principle should be rejected in favor of an apparent authority standard, which more appropriately strikes a balance between encouraging employers to identify harassing behaviors and exonerating them from liability when they do so and take appropriate remedial action. It further argues that in order to develop effective …

Women's Rights Under Labor Law: A Comparative Study Of Argentina And Canada, Valerie Oosterveld

Law Publications

No abstract provided.

Working For Women's Employment Rights In Poland, Kristin Long

Circles: Buffalo Women's Journal of Law and Social Policy

No abstract provided.

The Medical Malpractice Crisis In Obstetrics: A Gestalt Approach To Reform, Elizabeth Swire Falker

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The medical malpractice crisis in obstetrics has led to a decline in practicing obstetricians, particularly in high-risk and rural areas, disproportionately affecting disadvantaged women. This crisis is driven by high malpractice insurance premiums, defensive medicine practices, and poor physician-patient communication. The article proposes reforms, including the integration of certified nurse-midwives, improved communication strategies, and alternative compensation systems, to reduce litigation, stabilize insurance markets, and improve access to care.

United States. V. Virginia New Gender Equal Protection Analysis With Ramifications For Pregnancy, Parenting And Title Vii, Candace Kovacic-Fleischer

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

ABSTRACT: In this Article, Professor Kovacic-Fleischer argues that the Supreme Court's recent decision in United States v. Virginia raises gender equal protection analysis to the level of strict scrutiny. Professor Kovacic-Fleischer asserts that the Court's refusal to accept as immutable VMI's single-sex institutional design, and the Court's requirement that VMT make adjustments and alterations that will enable qualified women to undertake VM's curriculum evidences this shift in gender equal protection analysis. Professor Kovacic-Fleischer then turns to the significance of the Court's citation to California Federal Savings & Loan Association v. Guerra. She asserts that this citation indicates that the Court …

Commodification And Women's Household Labor, Katharine B. Silbaugh

Faculty Scholarship

A woman washes a kitchen floor. She puts the mop away and drives to the comer market. She consults a shopping list, and purchases groceries from it, carefully choosing the least expensive options. A four-year-old child is tugging at her leg while she does this, and she tries to entertain him, talking to him about the mopped floor, the grocery items. When she returns from the store, she prepares lunch from what she has brought home with her. She and the child both eat lunch. After lunch, she and the child collect laundry and she runs a load. She takes …

Gender In The Law Of Slavery In The Antebellum United States, Andrew T. Fede

Cardozo Law Review

In her thought-provoking paper Finding Sojourner's Truth: Race, Gender, and the Institution of Property, Cheryl I. Harris explores the connections between slavery, race, and gender in the law of the antebellum United States. Harris acknowledges that slaves alone were defined as property at law, and, therefore,*the legal status of slaves differed from free white women and free black women. She also acknowledges that "white women" were allowed property rights on "male-defined terms" but asserts, nevertheless, that free women could be considered as a form of property.

Brief Of Intervenor, Women’S Legal Education And Action Fund (Leaf), Goertz V. Gordon, Laura Spitz

Faculty Scholarship

Historically, women have been almost exclusively responsible for the unpaid labour of child care with the assumption of primary child care responsibilities after separation. The courts must analyze each situation to determine whether a joint custody arrangement, in law, is in fact true equal parenting, in roles and responsibilities, or one more akin to sole custody when considering relocation restrictions.

Hostile Environent Sexual Harassment Claims And The Unwelcome Influence Of Rape Law, Janine Benedet

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This article considers the unwelcomeness requirement of the plaintiff’s prima facie case. In particular, it examines the discussion of unwelcomeness found in the decision of the Supreme Court in Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson, and the content given to this element by the subsequent decisions of lower courts. Such an inquiry reveals several parallels between the approach of courts to sexual harassment claims and their traditional treatment of the criminal offense of rape. The same biases and erroneous assumptions that have hampered an effective response to the physical violation of women have permeated the application of the purported remedy …

(Dis)Assembling Rights Of Women Workers Along The Global Assembly Line: Human Rights And The Garment Industry Symposium: Political Lawyering: Conversations On Progressive Social Change, Laura Ho, Catherine Powell, Leti Volpp

Faculty Scholarship

Some observers would like to explain away sweatshops as immigrants exploiting other immigrants, as "cultural, or as the importation of a form of exploitation that normally does not happen here but occurs elsewhere, in the "Third World." While the public was shocked by the discovery at El Monte, garment workers and garment worker advocates have for years been describing abuses in the garment industry and have ascribed responsibility for such abuses to manufacturers and retailers who control the industry. Sweatshops, like the one in El Monte, are a home-grown problem with peculiarly American roots. Since the inception of the garment …

Comparable Worth And The Fair Pay Act Of 1994, Rhonda J. Blackburn

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

A Case For Pregnancy-Based Unemployment Insurance, Mark R. Brown

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Professor Brown argues that unemployment insurance laws should be amended to provide coverage to otherwise eligible, pregnant claimants. Under current law, women who quit because of pregnancy are either disqualified from receiving unemployment benefits altogether or qualify only after childbirth. Those who are fired, meanwhile, often either cannot prove the motivation for their discharge or discover that they are disqualified because of their unavailability for work. Professor Brown uses a case study to illustrate the problems posed by pregnancy and unemployment insurance. He proposes model legislation that extends coverage to all pregnant claimants who temporarily separate from their employment.

Lifting The Ban On Women's Night Work In Europe-A Straight Road To Equality In Employment?, Dagmar Schiek

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The article examines the historical and legal implications of the ban on women's night work in Europe, arguing that its removal does not inherently lead to employment equality. It emphasizes that without comprehensive, gender-neutral protective legislation, lifting the ban may exacerbate inequalities and worsen working conditions for women.