Legally, it s entirely up to employers to stop sex discrimination, according to Brad Seligman, a longtime antidiscrimination attorney in the Bay Area and now head of the Impact Fund, a nonprofit foundation in Berkeley that supports efforts to identify and stop discrimination. In fact, for certain kinds of discrimination, including sexual harassment, the law says that not only must employers stop the harassment when someone complains, they have a legal duty to prevent it, Seligman said. Under federal law, there is no liability for a supervisor who discriminates, but a supervisor s conduct results in the employer being responsible. The buck stops with the employer, said Seligman. As a practical matter, employers who don t control discrimination in their workplace can face draconian consequences.
Sex discrimination comes in many forms, and woman aren t always the victims.
About 10 percent of complaints come from men. Simply put, sex discrimination occurs when people are treated differently because of their gender. This is when a woman is paid less than a man for doing the same work. This can be a matter of job categories. But within the same organization, if a man and a woman are paid significantly different amounts for doing the same work with the same expertise, the pay equity issues become glaring.