Discrimination Against Women in the Work Force

Just 20 years ago, in most states a woman couldn't sign an apartment lease, get a credit rating, or apply for a loan unless her husband or a male relative agreed to share the responsibility. Similarly, a 1965 study found that 51 percent of men thought women were "temperamentally unfit for management" (Christopher 5). There can be no doubt that we have progressed a long way from these ideas in the last two decades. However, it is also unquestionable that women in the work force are still discriminated against, sexually harassed, paid less than men, and suffer from occupational sex segregation and fears of failure as well as fears of success. We will address all of these concerns in this paper, and look at some well-known court cases as illustrations.

Anyone who thinks sex discrimination is a thing of the past only has to ask Muriel Kraszewski or Ann Hopkins to learn differently. Muriel Kraszewski worked for State Farm Insurance Company for 12 years and was the leading candidate for an important promotion. She was denied the promotion because, her employers said, she had no college degree and was too much under the control of her husband. Kraszewski sued the company and won her case, after a nine year battle, in late January 1988. She was given what may be the largest sex-bias award in history: up to hundreds of millions for 1,113 other female State Farm employees with similar complaints, and $433,000 for Kraszewski herself ("State" 10).

percent of workers would have to move into a job category dominated by the opposite sex to even things out. Furthermore, Barbara R. Reskin, a sociologist at the University of Illinois, says that the 12 occupations in which women have made the greatest gains are merely part of an economic pattern in which prestige, career opportunities, and pay fall because of automation or some other factor, causing men to leave and allowing women to move in. A good example of this trend is bank tellers. Before World War II, most tellers were male and made good money. After the war and with the advent of increased automation, salaries fell and men left the occupation. Today, 95 percent of bank tellers are female and make an average of $7.26 per hour (Bernstein 49). Women dominate the clerical, teaching, and service professions, and men still dominate everything else. Some people argue that women limit themselves to these jobs voluntarily, because of sex differences or personality traits. However, the scientific evidence reviewed by the National Academy of Sciences does not support this view. Instead, it suggests that women face discrimination and institutional barriers such that "the opportunities that women encounter in the labor mark