Copyright © 2012 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.McGraw-Hill/Irwin

Chapter 17Civil Rights,

Women,and Diversity

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The Employment Non-Discrimination Act

o Brooke Waits worked hard and her job was part of her

o Away from work, Waits was open about being a lesbian, but at work she sensed that revealing herself would estrange her from the others

o After being fired, Waits testified before Congress

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The Employment Non-Discrimination Act

o Since the 1970s, supporters in Congress have tried to pass a law extending workplace protections to victims of bias such as Waits

o The Employment Non-discrimination Act of 2007 seeks to make it illegal to take any adverse job action based on sexual orientation

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A Short History of Workplace Civil Rights The Colonial Era

o Employment discrimination in America can be dated from 1619

o In the Declaration of Independence, “unalienable” rights are natural rightso Natural rights: Rights to which all human

beings are entitledo The unalienable rights statement in the

Declaration distills a body of doctrine know as the American Creed

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Civil War and Reconstruction

o In the United States, the issue of slavery rose to a crisis in the Civil War

o In 1863, President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation

o Following the war, Congress passed three constitutional amendments designed to protect the rights of former slaves

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Civil War and Reconstruction

o These amendments were supplemented by a series of civil rights acts passed by Congress

o With little enforcement of these laws, southern states adopted segregationist statutes called Jim Crow laws

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Other Groups Face Employment Discrimination

o Native Americans were widely treated as inferior

o When Mexico ceded Texas, 90,000 Hispanics became U.S. residents, but were victims of a range of discriminatory actions

o In 1851, Chinese laborers began to enter the country to be met by economic and racial discrimination

o The earliest Japanese immigrants found similar inhospitality

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The Civil Rights Cases

o The Civil Rights Act of 1875 was passed to prevent racial discrimination.o There was still widespread discrimination

against freed slaves by business and soon a series of cases reached the Supreme Court

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The Civil Rights Cases

o These cases were consolidated into one opinion by the Court in 1883 and called the Civil Rights Cases

o The Civil Rights Cases so narrowed the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment that it became irrelevant to a broad range of economic and social bias

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Plessy v. Ferguson

o The Separate Car Act was passed by Louisiana in 1890

o On June 7, 1892, Homer Plessy, who was 7/8 Caucasian and 1/8 African, was asked to move to the “nonwhite” coacho Plessy refused and was taken to a New

Orleans jail

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Plessy v. Ferguson

o Plessy brought suit, claiming he was entitled to “equal protection of the laws” as stated in the Fourteenth Amendmento The Supreme Court disagreed

o The ruling completed the destruction of the Fourteenth Amendment as a mechanism to guarantee civil rights

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Long Years of Discrimination

o Southern legislators were emboldened by Plessy

o Jim Crow laws spreado Black workers faced blatant discriminationo These customs spread to the north

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The Civil Rights Act of 1964

o In the late 1950s and early 1960s, a new civil rights movement arose

o The pressures of this movement led to many social reforms, among them passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964o Its Title VII prohibits discrimination in any

aspect of employmento Title VII created the Equal Employment

Opportunity Commission

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Disparate Treatment and Disparate Impact

o Title VII enforced a legal theory of disparate treatment

o When Title VII went into effect, employees could no longer engage in outwardly visible displays of discrimination

o The flaw in Title VII was that it contained no weapon to fight disparate impact

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The Griggs Case

o In Griggs v. Duke Power, the Supreme Court held that diploma requirements and tests that screened out blacks or other protected classes were illegal unless employers could show that they were related to job performance or justified by business necessity

o The Griggs decision, and the legal theory of disparate impact it created, was necessary for Title VII to work

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The Griggs Case

o In 1978 the EEOC defined illegal disparate impact for employers with a guideline know as the 80 percent rule

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Affirmative Action

o Policies that seek out, encourage, and sometimes give preferential treatment to employees in groups protected by Title VIII

o The origin of most affirmative action in corporations is Executive Order 11246

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The Supreme Court Changes Title VII

o The first high-profile challenge came from Allan Bakke, a white male denied admission to medical school, claiming reverse discriminationo The Supreme Court ruled in his favor

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The Supreme Court Changes Title VII

o A white laboratory analyst, Brian Weber, brought suit against Kaiser Aluminum claiming a promotion selection procedure violated Title VIIo The Court ruled against him saying Kaiser’s

affirmative action plan embodied “the spirit of the law

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The Supreme Court Changes Title VII

o These rulings established important criteria for judging the legality of subsequent affirmative action programs:o A plan must be designed to break down historic

patterns of race or sex discriminationo The plan must not create an absolute bar to

the advance of white employeeso The plan must not require the discharge of

white workerso The plan should be flexible and temporary

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The Affirmative Action Debate

o Utilitarian considerationso Ethical theories of justice raise questions

about the ultimate fairness of affirmative action

o Affirmative action may be debated in light of ethical theories on rights

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Women at Work

o Around the world more women work than ever before

o In 2009 there were 1.3 billion women in the global labor force of 3.2 billion, making up 40 percent of the total

o Participation rates are high in the least-developed countries, where poverty pushes women into paid labor

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Women at Work

o Lowest participation is found in Arab nations

o Wherever women work, they are more likely than men to be in low-productivity jobs in agriculture and services and to be paid less, even in the same jobs as men

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Gender Attitudes at Work

o The new feminist perspective asserted that working women were entitled to the same jobs, rights, and ambitions as men

o Men who believed in traditional sex-role stereotypes thought that women were too emotional to manage well; lacked ambition, logic, and toughness; and could not sustain career drive because of family obligations

o In the U.S. belief in the traditional stereotype has eroded but proves durable

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Subtle Discrimination

o Many workplace cultures are based on masculine values

o In blue-collar settings, sexism may be blatant; some men will openly express biases

o In managerial settings, sex discrimination is usually subtle, even unintentional

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Subtle Discrimination

o Masculine cultures underlie many kinds of differential treatment

o Men and women learn different ways of speaking in childhood

o Later in life these conversation styles carry over into the workplace, where they can place women at a disadvantage

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Sexual Harassment

o Many women experience sexual harassment at some time in their careers

o Men use sex-based harassment to define and enforce gender distinctions

o The EEOC guidelines define two situations where harassment is illegal:o Quid pro quoo Hostile environment

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Figure 17.2 - The EEOC Guidelines on Sexual Harassment

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Occupational Segregation

o Women are more likely to work in some jobs than others

o Within corporations and in the economy as a whole, female jobs are lower in status and pay than typically male jobs

o Women have less occupational diversity than do men

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Table 17.1 - The Top and Bottom 10 Occupations in Percentages of

Women

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Compensation

o Although the gender wage gap is closing, it is persistent for three reasons:o Occupational segregation places women in

female-dominated occupations that tend to be lower paying than male-dominated ones

o Women pay a heavy earnings penalty for child bearing and child rearing, activities that interrupt careers

o The gap reflects elements of sex discrimination

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Compensation

o The pay gap between men and women is worldwide, although in most other nations it is lower than in the United States

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Figure 17.3 - The Narrowing Gap in Weekly Earnings

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Diversity

o Diversity management: Programs to recruit from diverse groups, promote tolerance, and modify cultures to include nonmainstream employees

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Key Components of a Diversity Management Program

o Leadership from the top is criticalo Change in the organization structure

creates focal points for diversity effortso Training programs are very popularo Mentors can be assigned to women and

minorities to overcome isolation in firms where the hierarchy is predominantly white and male

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Key Components of a Diversity Management Program

o Data collection is needed to define issues and measure progress

o Policy changes establish new ruleso Reward systems encourage managers to

achieve diversity goals

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Concluding Observations

o The first national effort to end workplace discrimination began during the Civil Waro This visionary effort was defeated by social

values contrary to the lawso In the 1960s, a second effort began with

passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964o Today the accumulated corpus of

antidiscrimination law is massive, complex, and controversial but overall, it works

o Yet, more needs to be done

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Figure 17.4 - Four Civil Rights Eras