Sex Discrimination in the Workplace: It’s Not Over After All These Years

Despite the fact that core civil rights protections against employment discrimination have been in place for decades, and despite the fact that women have entered the workplace in droves, mistreatment of women workers persists.¹ Women still make only 77 cents for every dollar earned by men half a century after Congress enacted the Equal Pay Act in 1963, the first of a series of federal laws designed to ensure that women workers are treated equally. Pregnant workers, new mothers, and women working in traditionally male arenas face particularly acute discrimination.

Women who work in male-dominated sectors like shipping, police work, and baggage handling face different forms of pregnancy discrimination than do office workers. Many white-collar workers can expect to work through pregnancy without requiring any temporary job modifications apart from flexibility to attend doctors’ appointments. But jobs in male-dominated sectors — as well as some jobs in traditionally female sectors like home care, nursing, and waitressing — frequently involve lifting, standing for long periods, and the inability to take frequent breaks. Women who work in these types of jobs sometimes require minor, temporary adjustments when they are pregnant. Even though employers routinely grant adjustments of similar scope to non-pregnant workers, such as workers who are injured “on the job,” they often deny those same modifications to pregnant women, forcing them to take unpaid leave or exit the workplace entirely.

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