Sometimes it is easy to forget that discrimination against women, minorities and (of course) minority women still occurs in this country.

This might bring to mind examples where uneducated, unskilled women are denied employment and/or harassed by uneducated men who think of them as sex objects, such as in the movie North Country.

However, as discussed on Susan Cartier Liebel’s blog, this subject comes up in all areas of employment, including lawyers. Susan discusses the recent Wall Street Journal blog post: “When You Land The Job Interview, Should The Ring Come Off?“, which discusses whether lawyers should ditch their wedding ring for job interviews.

At first glance, some might think of this as paranoia, but an anonymous legal recruiter actually explains how the partners at law firms specifically tell him they prefer male over female recruits because they think these women will eventually get pregnant and either take time off or leave to start a family.

Sometimes employers are ignorant of the law and actually come right out and ask applicants about their family life for this very purpose. They ask things such as whether they plan to have children, what their husband thinks of them working outside the home and other questions that are not only illegal, but often extremely offensive.

While I would take this as a “red flag” that this is someone you might not want to work for, here is an article about how to deal with such questions “tactfully”.

In California, it is illegal to hire a man over a married (or unmarried) woman for any of these or similar reasons. Marital status discrimination is not hard to prove when an employer makes it a habit of doing this. All you have to do is look at the list of who is hired and who is not when new employees are hired.

Tags

California Employment Law | Discrimination | Family Medical Leave | Family Status Discrimination | Gender Discrimination | Marital Status Discrimination | Medical Leave Discrimination | Pregnancy Discrimination