Gender or Sex Discrimination
Title VII and the FEHA prohibit sex discrimination in employment.
“Terms or Conditions of Employment”
Sex discrimination is treating an employee or employees differently because of their gender. Whenever this discrimination affects the "terms or conditions of employment", it is illegal.
"Terms or conditions of employment" means just about anything relating to someone's job including their position, pay, title, hours, vacations, most everything is a term or condition of employment. Whether or not a person is hired is also considered a term or condition of employment.
Disparate Treatment & Disparate Impact
There are two types of sex discrimination: "disparate treatment" & "disparate impact".
Disparate Treatment:
Disparate treatment is straightforward discrimination. Simply put, it is treating a person differently because of his or her sex.
Disparate Impact:
Disparate Impact Discrimination is more complicated. "Disparate Impact" is where some type of company policy excluded a certain individuals from the job or from promotions. The policy was not designed to exclude them but it was the unfortunate result.
One example arises often in fire departments. The agencies had various strength requirements for job applicants. Women were frequently unable to meet these requirements. In some instances the requirements were absolutely necessary to ensure the firefighters were qualified. However in many instances, the requirements were simply too high or more than was necessary. Qualified women were therefore being excluded unnecessarily. This does not mean the fire departments were necessarily trying to exclude women but the result of their policy had a disparate impact upon women. Because the policy was not sufficiently job-related (too much strength was required) there was discrimination.
Equal Pay Act
Under the Federal Equal Pay Act, an amendment to the Fair Labor Standards Act, an employer may not discriminate in wages on the basis of sex. When male and female employees perform jobs which require substantially equal skill, effort, and responsibility, and are performed in similar working conditions, an employer must pay his employees equally. An employer, however, may be able to demonstrate that these payment decisions are based on a reasonable factor other than sex, such as merit, a seniority system, or a quantity system. If an employee can establish a violation of the Equal Pay Act, an employer must correct the differential by increasing the wages of the lower paid sex, not by decreasing the wages of the higher paid sex.
Stereotyping
It is also illegal to make employment decisions based on stereotypes regarding gender. For example: An employer can violate the Federal Title VII anti-discrimination law if it delays a female employee's promotion based in part on evaluation comments describing her as "macho" and advising her to "take a course in charm school".
Gender Roles
Frequently employers expect women to have certain duties such as caring for children. If an employer does not hire a woman with preschool-age children, while at the same time it did hire men with preschool-age children, then this could be discrimination even if most of the people hired were women.
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Our law office is located in the North Texas city of Frisco, 25 Miles north of Dallas, TX and just 5 miles North of Plano TX.
Thering McCarley
