Note the training required below. Do you think this company could have avoided this lawsuit if it had trained employees ahead of time?
The Denver Hotel Management Company (DHMC) will pay $105,000 to
settle a sex discrimination case filed by the U.S. Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission (EEOC). The EEOC had
charged that the company refused to promote a single mother because she
had children.
According to the EEOC lawsuit, the woman was denied promotion to a
newly created position of assistant human resource director because of
her caregiver responsibilities as the mother of two young children, and
the job was given to a less qualified and less experienced employee.
The managers explained to the woman that she was being passed over for
the job because of her role as a mother of young children, asserting
that she could not relocate or work the required 50-60 hour work week
because she “had a full-time job at home with her children,” the EEOC
said. According to the EEOC’s complaint, the woman was never asked if
she would be willing to relocate or work extended hours. Instead, the
decision-makers assumed that because the complainant was the mother and
primary caregiver for small children, she would be unwilling to relocate
or work extended hours.
Discrimination based on stereotypical views of a woman’s caregiver
status is a form of sex discrimination prohibited by Title VII of the
Civil Rights Act of 1964.
DHMC has agreed to pay $105,000 to settle the case (EEOC v. Denver Hotel Management Company, Inc.,
Civ. No. 10-cv-01712-REB-BNB.) Under the consent decree settling the
suit, DHMC also agreed to revamp its discrimination policies and conduct
training for all of its employees to explain how stereotypes concerning
a person’s family responsibilities can constitute illegal sex
discrimination.
“Making assumptions about a woman’s ability to perform a job which
are not grounded in fact, but instead on stereotyped assumptions about
her inability to work long hours due to her child care responsibilities,
is unlawful discrimination,” said EEOC Regional Attorney Mary Jo
O’Neill. “The Supreme Court has acknowledged that there is a pervasive
stereotype that caring for family members is ‘women's work,’ and that
this stereotype remains firmly rooted in our society. The EEOC is
committed to eliminating all forms of sex discrimination from the
workplace.”