Archive for the ‘Sex Discrimination’ Category
Man Files Lawsuit Over Access to Domestic Violence Shelters
Eldon Ray Blumhorst, 42, has filed a civil rights lawsuit against 10 battered women’s shelters in Los Angeles that denied him a place to stay. Blumhorst called the 10 shelters in December saying that he needed shelter from domestic violence, but none of the shelters would accept him on the grounds that they only serve women.
Blumhorst maintains that is a violation of California laws that prohibit sexual discrimination by programs receiving state funding, as the domestic violence shelters do. Writing on the case for Women’s Enews, however, Elizabeth Zwerling quotes a lawyer representing 9 of the 10 shelters as saying that,
Women’s shelters receive funding from the state pursuant to a gender-specific funding statute. . . . Our argument is that these are lawful programs. The case has no legal merit.
Zwerling interviewed people at Los Angeles shelters who said since they have limited resources, they have no choice but to focus on women and children. Ben Schirmer of Rainbow Services told Zwerling that,
The fact that we limit ourselves to women and children is not to say that it is not a problem with men. It’s that we have limited resources and it’s all we can do to try and keep up with the demand for services for women and children.
It’s not clinically appropriate to house men and women in the same facility.
Another shelter director, Kathie Mathis of the Domestic Violence Center of Santa Clarita, tells Zwerling that she doesn’t simply turn away men, but rather refers them to shelters that do take men. “We’re all in a network,” Mathis said. “No one is turned away; they’re just referred.”
But according to an article about the case by Glenn Sacks, the nearest shelter to Los Angeles that accepts men is 80 miles from downtown Los Angeles. Moreover, that shelter does house bot men and women and, according to Sacks, does so apparently without the sort of clinical problems that Schirmer seems to think are inherent to the practice.
Zwerling cites California State University, Long Beach professor Martin Fiebert’s research that reviewed more than 100 international studies of domestic violence and found that women are “as physically aggressive or more aggressive than men in their relationships with their spouses or male partners.”
She follows this up, though with a quote from Linda Berger, director of the Statewide California Coalition for battered Women, who maintains that most violent acts by women are defensive.
But as Sacks notes, two large studies of domestic violence funded by the National Institute of Mental Health found that women were just as likely to initiate violence in domestic settings as were men.
Blumhorst’s lawsuit is a long shot at best, but it’s interesting that Schirmer attacks the lawsuit with largely the same language that targets of lawsuits by feminists have used,
It’s hard to run a nonprofit in today’s economy. It’s easier to sue than to start a new shelter. But lawsuits like this that take us away from our mission do not help anybody.
If only those pesky men would take their lawsuits over gender equality and go home!
Sources:
Suit presses for ‘gender symmetry’ in shelters. Elizabeth Zwerling, Women’s eNews, July 21, 2003.
Battered husbands’ injuries no jokes. Glenn Sacks, Ifeminists.Net, June 17, 2003.
Scottish Men Sue Over Dress Code
Following the lead of an English civil servant, almost a thousand Scottish civil servants have filed complaints charging that dress codes requiring they wear shirts and ties constitute sex discrimination.
Staff members at Scotland’s Department of Work and Pension argue that since their jobs do not bring them into contact with the public, it is sexist to force them to wear shirts and ties while women are allowed to wear less formal attire.
The Scotsman quoted employment lawyer Euan Smith as saying that the men likely had a strong case,
I see no reason why they won’t win their case. The question is whether they [the employers] also apply similar conditions to the women.
I suspect it stems from the hot weather. Where it is roasting hot, if you insist on men wearing shirts and ties in the office and women are in T-shirts and jeans, it must be annoying for them.
Source:
Men take employers to court over dress code. Tanya Thompson, The Scotsman, July 16, 2003.
Tags: Scotland
Norway Proposes to Set Quotas for Women on Corporate Boards
Norwegian legislator Laila Daavoey has introduced a bill that would require Norway’s top 600 companies or so to create a quota system for filling board positions. Comapnies that fail to fill at least 40 percent of their corporate board positions by 2005 would face financial penalties begining in 2007.
This follows an announcement in November by Sweden’s Vice Prime Minister Margareta Winberg that Sweden would begin taking action against companies that failed to increase female representation on their corporate boards from the curretn 8 percent to 25 percent by 2004.
Daavoey offered up a saying which she apparently highlights the need for such drastic actions, but actualy does a nice job of pointing out the idiocy of such quota systems. According to Daavoey,
There will not be equality until you have incompetent women in the boardroom.
That certainly is a lofty goal worth fighting for.
Maggie Gallagher had a better comment on this proposed regimen in an op-ed,
In Europe, it appears that in the name of democracy, elites are pursuing an autocratic centralized power, seeking economic control and social regimentation. They seem to have no hesitation about using the law to forcibly suppress opposition. Call it Eurofascism, lite. Only they call it democracy.
Sources:
Norway eyes law to shatter glass ceiling. Lizette Alvarez, Contra-Costa Times, July 18, 2003.
Eurofascism, Lite. Maggie Gallagher, Yahoo.Com, July 15, 2003.
Tags: Laila Daavoey, Margareta Winberg, Norway, Sweden
Requiring Men to Wear Ties Is Sex Discrimination?
The Daily Telegraph reported in March that a 32-year-old civil servant had won his sexual discrimination complaint against his employer after a new dress code required men at the company to wear ties.
The actual dress code required employees at a JobCenter office to dress in a “professional and businesslike manner” and went on to say,
For men the basic standard is to wear a collar and tie; for women to dress appropriately and to a similar standard . . . Within these rules staff are free to decide what clothes to wear.
Matthew Thompson filed a complaint with an industrial tribunal that this was sex discrimination. Thompson argued that since the dress code mentioned a specific set of clothes for men — collared shirt and tie — but did not mention any specific clothes that women had to wear, that it was discriminatory.
And the industrial tribunal agreed saying, in part,
If we were to turn the argument round and the only mandatory item of clothing had been for a woman to wear, say, a skirt, and she was disciplined for wearing some other item, would that be deemed discriminatory against her on the grounds of sex? We believe it would be.
Can’t you wait until tribunals like this are scouring through our lives looking to abolish every hint of an imbalance between the sexes?
Source:
Telling men to wear ties is sex discrimination. Sandra Laville, The Daily Telegraph (London), March 12, 2003.
Tags: Great Britain
Should Great Britain Discriminate Against Female Doctors?
The BBC reported on an odd trend in British medicine today — there are too many female doctors. One of the central planners of Great Britain’s medical system touched off a controversy by suggesting that medical schools might have to start discriminating against women in order to boost the number of male doctors.
The problem with female doctors goes to the heart about debates over why men earn more, on average, than women. Female physicians in Great Britain end up working significantly less than male physicians do. According to statistics from the Royal College of General Practitioners, female physicians work an average of 24 years versus 31 years for men.
What are they doing during those 7 years? They are temporarily leaving the profession or entering part-time work, probably to accommodate other priorities such as raising children.
Add to that the fact that about 60 percent of students in medical school are women, and the result is an almost certain shortage of doctors in Great Britain during the next decade. The government says it will find a way to scrounge up 2,000 extra physicians, when the British Medical Association estimates that at least 10,000 more physicians are needed.
So, should medical schools in Great Britain start discriminating against women? Of course not. The problem here has nothing to do with gender and everything to do with Great Britain’s National Health System.
In the United States, the health care system deals with shortages through the free market. For example, over the past several years there has been a pretty marked shortage of nurses. Competition for available nurses has driven nursing salaries higher, in turn enticing more people to become nurses. Eventually the number of nurses available will meet or exceed the demand and nursing salaries will likely level out and likely decline in some places.
Much of Great Britain’s health care system is controlled and centrally planned by the state. The National Health System is perpetually short of cash and cannot afford to pay market rates for doctors. This means that talented doctors open up expensive private practices or else go into other fields or emigrate to other countries. The result is the shortage seen today which the British Medical Association wrongly associates with simply a decline in the number of men seeking to be general practitioners.
Source:
Medicine ‘may have to favour men’. The BBC, April 8, 2002.
Judge Overturns Army’s Affirmative Action Promotion Policy
In March a federal judge ruled unconstitutional an U.S. Army policy that gave preferential treatment in promotion to women and minorities.
The Army’s written policy urged promotion boards to consider “past personal or institutional discrimination” when considering candidates for promotion. A white, male officer passed over for promotion in 1996 and 1997 sued, arguing that the policy was unconstitutionally discriminatory.
In his ruling, Federal Judge Royce C. Lamberth noted that the Army had failed to establish that women and minorities had been discriminated against in the past during promotions. He cited statistics noting that since the 1970s the promotion rate for white and black officers had been almost identical.
“This [policy] undeniably establishes a preference in favor of one race or gender over another, and therefore is unconstitutional,” Lamberth wrote in his 68-page opinion.
The Army has not yet decided whether it will appeal, but since Lamberth framed his ruling very similar to Supreme Court decisions striking down affirmative action programs, overturning the verdict on appeal would be a long shot at best.
And imagine that — the Army having to judge people as individuals based on merit instead of based on their particular group membership. How will the nation ever survive such a radical notion?
Source:
Judge halts an army policy on promotion. Neely Tucker, Washington Post, March 5, 2002.
Is Positive Discrimination the Solution to Gender Imbalances in British Parliament?
After last summer’s elections in Great Britain, women made up only 118 of 659 politicians elected to the House of Commons. Great Britain is now considering requiring political parties to nominate women. Is this legal or even a good idea?
In the 1990s, Great Britain experimented with a system that forced parties to nominate more women for the British version of primary elections. That system was ruled illegal when it was challenged by law professor Peter Jepson.
On Jan. 28, Parliament approved a bill that would reinstate this system, essentially allowing political parties to engage in “positive discrimination” that would be illegal for private entities to do.
It is not clear that this is either legal or desirable.
Jepson told Women’s ENews that he would again challenge the practice, this time under European Union law. “I’m not at odds with the Labour Party over the inadequate representation of women in Parliament,” Jepson told Women’s ENews, “But there is nothing positive about discrimination.”
Current Member of Parliament Anne Widdecomb said she opposed the planned change not only because it would violate the human rights of men, but would also create a two-tiered group of female MPs. Widdecombe said,
It would create two groups of women MPs, one who could look everyone from the prime minister down in the eye, and the other that got there because of special favors. I wouldn’t find that helpful. I’d find it humiliating.
Widdecombe believes that the gender balance will shift when women who grew up in the 1980s when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister reach their 40s and 50s. Even then, though, it is questionable if women will ever achieve the exact 50/50 split that some feminists seem to desire.
By comparison, Women’s ENews notes that only 14 percent of U.S. House of Representative members are women. That percentage will almost certainly be higher 20 years from now, but I suspect the same sort of factors that result in a rather persistent wage gap will also result in large gender imbalances in democratically elected legislatures.
Source:
British Parliament passes bill to elect more women. Paul Rodgers, Women’s ENews, February 15, 2002.
North Carolina Boy Wants Tryout for Girls Softball Team
Josh Godbold is in an odd position — the 8th grader desperately wants to obtain some experience so that he can have a shot at trying out for a high school baseball team next year. There’s only one problem. The middle school Godbold attends has a girl’s softball team but no boy’s baseball team — and the school and state law forbid him from trying out for the team.
Although there are a few hundred female athletes playing on boys teams in North Carolina, where Godbold live, Title IX has never been interpreted by courts to allow boys to participate in girls sports, even in cases such as Godbold’s where the school does not offer an equivalent boys version of a girls sport.
NewsObserver.Com notes that North Carolina relies on a 1994 interpretation of Title IX written by the then-director of the Southeast regional director of the Office for Civil Rights for the U.S. Department of Education. In language that is purely Orwellian, that interpretation maintains that,
For example, a male may not argue that his opportunities to play on a female volleyball or softball team have previously been limited because his school has never offered these sports for males. … Overall athletic opportunities for males are not limited because, at a particular school, females may be permitted to try out for all teams while males may not try out for female teams.
Godbold’s father, Ricky, offered a much more common sense interpretation of fairness saying, “He’s being discriminated against playing a sport because he’s a boy. If a girl has a chance to try out for any sport at a school, he should, too.”
Laws to alleviate sexual discrimination should, at a minimum, be symmetrical when it comes to sex — if it is wrong to sexually discriminate against women in a given situation, it should also be wrong to sexually discriminate against men in a similar situation. Godbold should be allowed to try out for the softball team.
Source:
Girls’ team only option, boy says. T. Keung Hui, NewsObserver.Com, February 15, 2002.
Transsexual Wins $4,600 Award from Rape Counseling Group for Sex Discrimination
CNSNews.Com reports that this week a Canadian human rights court awarded Kimberly Nixon $4,664 after it agreed that her rights had been violated by The Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter. Nixon is a transsexual who was born male and had sexual reassignment surgery in 1990. The shelter argued that since Nixon grew up male, he did not have the life experiences necessary to counsel women about rape. The court disagreed, finding the shelter engaged in sexual discrimination.
According to Nixon’s lawyer, Barbara Findlay — who has specialized in lawsuits that seek legal recognition of transsexuals — this is the first case of this kind in North America in which the transsexual has one. In a similar case brought against a Canadian prison which refused to hire a transsexual for a counseling position in a women’s prison, the prison prevailed in its claim that a transsexual raised as a man did not share the life experiences necessary to counsel female prisoners.
Nixon told CNSNews.Com that the refusal of The Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter to hire her had caused a great deal of harm to her self-esteem and dignity,
The fact that they view me as a man was amazingly hurtful, because my whole life I’ve had to deal with feelings around being male, because that’s not who I am. It was very, I guess, damaging to my sense of self, and my identity of being a female was undermined.
Nixon says the shelter remains in denial about its discriminatory attitude toward her and would like the court to order the shelter to institute training to “un-learn trans-phobia.”
Findlay says that the court’s decision, “sent a message to Americans pressuring for the same kind of change. It is, in my opinion, at long last the beginning of the end of discrimination against trans-gender people.” For its part, the shelter is considering an appeal.
Lets hope Findlay is wrong and that this sort of insanity does not spread south to the United States. The shelter here has an open and shut case, as far as I’m concerned, that their right to free association and desire to have an all-woman staff trumps any sort of claim Nixon might have.
Source:
Transgender Advocates vs. Feminists in Legal Battle. Alison Appelbe, CNSNews.Com, January 25, 2002.
Male Coach Wins $1.6 Million Lawsuit Against Smith College
In 1996, Smith College — an all women’s college that pioneered women’s sports, including holding the first women’s intercollegiate basketball game in 1893 — fired its basketball and soccer coach, Jim Babyak. In December, Babyak was awarded $1.6 million by a jury that agreed with his claims he had been fired because of his sex and age.
Babyak had received good performance evaluations through 1995 and helped build Smith College’s athletics into an extremely successful program. In 1996, when he was fired, the basketball team set a school record for victories and the soccer team won its sixth conference championship.
But Babyak was fired because, he claimed, official at the small college wanted a female coach. The college claimed that he tried to forced his student athletes to give him favorable reviews. He did so, according to the school, buy offering team captain positions to students in exchange for good reviews, and threatening to cancel a trip to San Antonio if his athletes did not give him good reviews.
The college’s case was undermined, however, by the facts. Babyak did not choose team captains, for example, but rather captains were chosen by a vote of the team members. Although the college maintained that Babyak had attempted to manipulate and bribe student athletes at a meeting, they admitted in court that they never even tried to interview an assistant coach and an athletic trainer who were at the meeting in which these untoward events allegedly took place.
Babyak insists that he does not want to become some sort of symbol, nor does he want his case to detract from any of the gains that female athletes have made, but he adds a commonsense bit of advice,
I’m trying to look at the positive side. Women have been struggling for equality for a long time. But once you reach equality, you have to treat people in kind. You can’t treat people as you have been treated in the past.
Source:
Smith bias case brought justice, ex-coach says. Ralph Ranalli, Boston Globe, December 20, 2001.