Permission to Smack the Morons

The Philadelphia Inquirer is "reporting" today that pregnancy discrimination in the workplace still persists.

The absurdity of pregnancy discrimination is difficult to fathom when examined from a higher altitude.

The demands that are placed on mothers --- by us as children --- and by spouses, are the kinds of demands that would humble most men.  And lets not even talk about childbirth itself.   Many men behave as though they are dying and incapacitated when simply suffering from the common cold, while many women are still handling full-time childcare, familycare, and homecare demands (all while battling a 102 degree fever).

So it's difficult to understand in the abstract why an employer can have one attitude regarding his own mother or spouse, but an altogether different attitude about that employee who had the unmitigated gall to get pregnant.  It would make George Orwell smile.

There are instances when money damages may not be enough.  The Plaintiff should be permitted also to give the Defendant a smack upside the head.  Kudos to the Plaintiff's counsel here, and shame on the employer.

As I was just saying....

     Not a day after I commented upon the difference between talking diversity and doing diversity, I read in the Philadelphia Business Journal this article pointing out that the hiring of women at big law firms has declined, according to an annual survey by the National Association of Women Lawyers.

     But how is this possible?  How many big firms now have "diversity officers?"  How many profess to provide extensive diversity programs (so they can secure business from clients who insist upon hiring law firms with diversity programs)?  I called the National Bar Association, the US' oldest and largest association of African American lawyers and judges to find out whether they do a similar survey and was unable to find one.

     On the other hand, the American Bar Association has done such studies and found, among other things, that nearly 100% of women of color practicing law have left the practice within a decade after starting.  I am also personally aware of three bar associations with active "diversity committees," but whose membership continues to be a sea of white, male faces (notwithstanding the fact that as a whole, the United States is becoming a sea of considerably diverse faces, which means eventually a serious disconnect between lawyers and their clients).

     As I commented yesterday, it's the doppler shift ---- everyone sees things from their own point of view, but it's basically the same thing if everyone were looking at it at the same time ---- it's sexism and it's racism and it's other types of "isms" prohibited by law, but routinely practiced.

     So if you watch Sheryl Sandberg tonight on Charlie Rose, you can choose to believe the one speeding away on the train to success, or you can look at the numbers.

Diversity and the Doppler Shift

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg was recently interviewed by Charlie Rose in an interview to be broadcast Friday, November 11, 2011. She was interviewed jointly with Mark Zuckerberg in a wide-ranging discussion including Facebook's competitive stance, Google+, gaming, and Steve Jobs. The entire transcript is already available on TechCrunch here.

As an employment lawyer, of particular interest to me are Ms. Sandberg's comments near the end of the segment that she believes women aren't always "ambitious" enough to succeed. She made reference to a Harvard Business School case study by Kathleen McGlinn in which a highly successful woman's career path was outlined for study participants, and the individual was alternatively given a female name (Heidi) or a male name (Howard) and the participants were asked to give their impressions. Sandberg commented

[T]he point of that study is that success and likability are positively correlated for men and negatively for women. So as a man gets more powerful and more successful, everyone — men and women like him more. And as a woman gets more powerful and successful, everyone, including women like them less.

(To be fair, and not take her completely out of context, Ms. Sandberg elaborates on these issues in a TED Talk, "Why We Have Too Few Women Leaders.")

Too often individuals of diverse background who have made it onto the "success train" appear more concerned about saving their seats on that train than allowing anyone else on the train. Time and again, I have encountered women who faced more difficulties with women supervisors, and minority candidates getting a harder time of it from supervisors of the same race or ethnicity. It is almost as if these supervisors are saying "I've made it; one is enough." it is like the sociological equivalent to the doppler shift, where the motion through time and space changes the frequency of sound and light to the viewer without doing so for the one who is moving or advancing.

Sales training courses teach us that people want to do business with people like them. That's taking the easy way out, and completely fails to realize that the world (and the USA in particular) is becoming increasingly diverse.

I have participated in any number of entities who have established "Diversity Committees" to attempt to attack these problems. More often than not, the committees make recommendations, sometimes actually change their by-laws, but not their underlying opinions (and biases). More importantly, actual results are even more rare. But the participants wring their hands and say "but we discussed diversity!"

Talk is cheap. It also doesn't accomplish a whole heck of a lot.

To put it another way, I believe Ms. Sandberg is mistaken when she suggests women aren't as ambitious. They just don't seem so to her. I don't believe she is looking at the situation from a genuine diversity perspective.

Therein lies the challenge of diversity --- diversity implies seeing things from diverse points of view, not just one. If everyone saw things from diverse perspectives, change would be inevitable.