Reprint: R1209G
Most managers know better than to blurt out, “This is no job for a woman.” Yet many are surprisingly open about their bias against mothers and other caregivers. This type of discrimination takes the form of comments like “Don’t you feel bad leaving your kids at home?”; assumptions about mothers’ lack of commitment to work or inability to handle a tougher load; and blatant differences in salary and promotional opportunities.
Such behavior can get your company into legal trouble, say the authors, a distinguished professor at the University of California’s Hastings College of Law and an associate professor at Harvard Business School. In the United States, the number of family-responsibilities lawsuits jumped almost 400% from 1998 to 2008. In federal court, the success rate of plaintiffs in these cases is high; roughly two-thirds of them prevail—about twice as many as prevail in all employment discrimination cases. And it isn’t just mothers who are taking firms to court: Men and people caring for elderly parents are also filing suits and winning them.
Executives need to be aware of the costs, which include settlements that can run into the millions, negative publicity, and the loss of valued contributors. To avoid them, they should educate themselves—and their employees—about the law, work to eliminate any stigma associated with flextime in the office, and set clear policies about family-responsibilities discrimination.
Most managers know to keep gender bias to themselves. Some might think that men are better suited to certain roles and women to others. But virtually all of us understand that expressing those views could get us into trouble on the job. So we keep our mouths shut, just as we curb our opinions about age.
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