Category: Sex Discrimination

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.

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.

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.

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.