When Sekiko Garrison told former boss Michael Bloomberg she was pregnant, his answer, she alleges, was simple: "Kill it!" Allowing mothers flexible work arrangements, he reportedly commented, was like allowing a man time off to practice his golf swing. The CEO who took over when Bloomberg left the company allegedly demanded that managers "get rid of these pregnant bitches" (referring to two women on maternity leave). The Head of Global Human Resources reportedly commented that mothers "belong at home" and that "women [do] not really [have] a place in the workforce." The Head of News is said to have commented that "half these f**king people take the [maternity] leave and they don't even come back. It's like stealing money from Mike Bloomberg's wallet. They should be arrested." The Head of Global Data allegedly asked, "Who would want to work with an office full of women?" (These quotes are from the EEOC's Memorandum in Opposition to Defendant's Motion for Summary Judgment.)
And yet Federal Judge Loretta Preska said last week there was so little evidence of discrimination that she would not allow the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to proceed to trial to try to prove that Bloomberg L.P. had discriminated against mothers. Preska, a Bush appointee who typically sides with business, ended her opinion with a severe scolding: "At bottom, the EEOC's theory of this case is about so-called 'work-life balance' ... [The EEOC's claim] amounts to a judgment that Bloomberg, as a company policy, does not provide its employee-mothers with a sufficient work-life balance." Preska quotes (as binding authority?) former General Electric CEO Jack Welch: "There's no such thing as work-life balance. There are work-life choices, and you make them, and they have consequences."
Where to start? The plaintiffs in this case were not asking for work-life balance. They were asking that their employer not discriminate against them because they were mothers. Recent social science suggests that motherhood is the strongest trigger for gender discrimination in today's workplace. If you give people identical resumes, one a mother and the other not, the mother is 79 percent less likely to be hired, 100 percent less likely to be promoted, offered an average of $11,000 less in salary, and held to higher performance and punctuality standards, according to a study by Shelley Correll, Steve Benard and In Paik. Note: identical resumes. This is not a measure of the desire for work-life balance. It's evidence of extraordinarily strong discrimination against mothers. And, as the quotes from Bloomberg management demonstrate, discrimination against mothers is not only very strong; often, it's also very open.
Discrimination at Bloomberg L.P. appears to have been very open indeed. Yet through a series of procedural rulings, Judge Preska threw out most of the EEOC's evidence and then held that it had so little evidence that it could not take the case to trial. First, she rejected the EEOC's statistical evidence. Then she threw out statements like those above. Those statements she could not throw out for technical reasons she simply ignored. (The comments about leave-takers stealing Mike's money were not excludable for any of the reasons the judge identified. And by the way, it is illegal under the Family and Medical Leave Act to discourage people from taking FMLA leave. Would you be discouraged by these comments?)
I won't go deeply into the technical problems with the court's opinion. But the court got caught in a time warp. Ten years ago, suits against mothers were often stymied because courts could not find a suitable "comparator" -- a similarly situated pregnant man. Courts eventually solved this problem by abandoning their search for a comparator, instead allowing plaintiffs to prove discrimination by introducing evidence of stereotyping (e.g., comments about how mothers belong at home). But Judge Preska turned back the clock. She not only insisted on comparator evidence but rejected the obvious comparison between people who took maternity leave and those who did not. Instead, she insisted that the plaintiffs compare their salary growth to that of employees who took leaves of similar length. But healthy men don't typically take long leaves, which means that plaintiffs' salary growth was compared to that of employees who, one assumes, either were seriously ill, seriously disabled or else had gone on an extended vacation to discover themselves in Aruba. Not surprisingly, under these circumstances, the significant salary disparity found by the plaintiff's expert magically disappeared.
But the most troubling thing about this case is Judge Preska's confusion about the difference between work-life balance and discrimination against mothers: "The law does not mandate 'work-life balance.' It does not require companies to ignore employees' work-family tradeoffs -- and they are tradeoffs -- when deciding about employee pay and promotions." True that.
What employers are not allowed to do is discriminate against mothers on the fast track because a different group of mothers decided to leave the fast track. If the judge doesn't understand that, she needs a refresher course on the basics of anti-discrimination law, set down in the 1970s. You can't penalize women who don't conform to stereotypes just because other women do conform to them.
If we abandon these basic principles of anti-discrimination law, it's open season on mothers. And that's a really, really devastating setback for women. Studies show what dooms women economically in the United States is not being a woman -- it's being a mother. If the courts refuse to protect mothers on the fast track simply because other mothers decided to leave, we are not going to have gender equality anytime soon. That's for damn sure.
Cross-posted from New Deal 2.0.
Follow Joan Williams on Twitter: www.twitter.com/JoanCWilliams
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Morra Aarons-Mele: The Shifting Roles and Expectations for Men and Women
Lia Petridis Maiello: Spinning It Bloomberg Style
1. Tell Management or Project leadership you should be removed from the project while pregnant because you cannot make a worthy contribution, and then offer an employees name you know would be a better choice to be part of the team.
* note No you wont be getting the bonus or the accolade associated with the achievement
2. Buy your coworker a free lunch or two or just hand them game tickets as an apology for them doing your work for free.
3. When you return ask to do their work for them and let them leave early on Friday.
4. Do NOT take vacation when you come back to the office, your co-workers have been enslaved for 3 months have some compassion.
5. Remember the $50 gift you got at the obligatory shower at work ? More like 30 of them ? You might consider a thank you note or at least offering to buy a cup of coffee.
6. Understand that now your one achievement below your coworkers for the year so your not on equal footing when it comes time for promotion. You'll have to find a special project to complete before years end. So when your passed over for the promotion don't blame discriminatory practices blame your life choice.
These women abuse and exploit the rules at the expense of others who are not pregnant. Not simply because they are pregnant but I'm talking out right abuse. Those of us who are "carrying the load" are not compensated in any way shape or form for our "extra work".
The company doesn't bring in extra labor or outsource the work when these women are absent from the job they simply force the work on to their coworkers, thats their solution.
This is what other people see with pregnant women
Not one occurrence but every week:
1 They come in late to work without explanation
2 They never record absence from work as official sick leave or vacation
3 They leave midday and just say their feeling poorly
4 They spend hours at work shopping for baby
5 They spend hours chatting with coworkers about baby
6 They expect everyone to herald their pregnancy like the 2nd coming of Christ
7 They stop working a week before actually being on FMLA
8 They fully expect to be part of the winning project team meeting when they return
I could go on and on but you get the picture
I'm just letting you know this is how we see you.
Kai
What is 100% less likely to be promoted mean? No mothers were promoted when compared to everyone else?
100% less likely to be promoted means that people who were not mothers were two times as likely to get promoted as similarly situated mothers.
That's odd wording if not outright wrong. They probably should have said "half as likely" or, as you worded it, in reverse "twice as likely". If someone already had a 100% chance of promotion, 100% less like likely would appear to be 0%.
Often parenthood brings a certain maturity, dedication, insight to a profession that is extremely useful and worth keeping.
And, yes, I think men probably waste lots of work time recovering from partying, drinking, doing drugs that take away from work time. It's just that this is "understood", excused by the powers that be.
I am a stay at home mom that chose to leave my career since I wanted to raise my kids myself. The problem really is the misconception that you can have it all and do it all. It's like saying I can have a successful career as a firefighter and a physicist at the same time. The result of the feminist movement backfired and now women are expected to juggle too much, and the companies and co-workers are expected to share in the juggling. It was her choice to get pregnant and regardless she cannot expect to be compensated as much as the person who is always there, puts in late hours, and jumps through all the hoops. The balance is in accepting less at work in exchange for having a family, sorry!
However, there are situations where the other partner assumes the primary caregiving role so the woman can focus on work, these situations are exceptions and the only way to take the load off.
The cultural problem is not that mothers want to work. The cultural problem is the cutthroat corporate mentality that not only discriminates against mothers, but is trying to destroy the entire middle class family option with low wages, no pension, few if any health care benefits.
It's unlikely that Prof. Williams or anyone else will be able to change Judge Preska's view of the case at this point, so it likely will be up to the appellate courts to decide whether Prof. William's view of the case is correct or whether Judge Preska's view of the case is correct.
Yes, because we really don't care why you are gone, just that you're gone and you're not at work. Why should it possibly matter to us why you are gone? If she chose to get pregnant, that was her choice. If she chose to "find herself in Aruba" that would also be her choice. Why should it make any difference to me?
The quote above destroys any case for discrimination. As the court noted, it doesn't matter why you chose to take leave, you took it, and there are consequences to one's career sometimes.