Like many women who came of age after the women`s movement had begun, Vikki Soreo-Yasher took her equality at work for granted. She was aware that women sometimes had problems in the workplace, but she hadn`t experienced any herself.
That all changed when Soreo-Yasher, a property manager in Cleveland, announced to her employer, First Office Management, a national real estate company, that she was pregnant.
In her eighth month, a week before her scheduled leave, Soreo-Yasher walked into her office and found her boss waiting for her. ”He said he wanted to go over things in preparation for my imminent leave,” she recalls.
Then, according to Soreo-Yasher, as they were wrapping up the meeting, he announced that she would be permanently replaced by someone else. ”I couldn`t believe it. I almost fainted,” she says. ”I asked him `How can you do this?` He said that I had a big job and he couldn`t leave it open for eight weeks. He already had hired someone from Cincinnati, and he said he only wished I`d be around to train my replacement-who was a man.”
Once she recovered from her shock, Soreo-Yasher called her husband and then a hotline operated by 9 to 5, a national association of working women that counsels women about labor practices. Convinced that she had a legitimate case, she filed a formal complaint of sex discrimination with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, charging that the firm had fired her solely because she was pregnant.
Frances Lewis, vice president of publications for Equity, the parent company of First Office Management, refused to comment on Soreo-Yasher`s case, but said, ”Our company does not discharge people because of maternity. In my 10 years with the company, I`ve taken two maternity leaves.”
Now, while the EEOC continues to investigate Soreo-Yasher`s case, she is still unemployed and at home with her baby. (She has looked for work but can find nothing comparable. She and her husband have moved in with his mother to help meet their expenses.)
Along with millions of other Americans, Soreo-Yasher was riveted by the televised hearings in which law professor Anita Hill accused Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment. Soreo-Yasher was outraged by the condescending and hostile way the all-male Senate Judiciary Committee treated Hill.
That scene was a turning point for her; she decided to pursue her own case more aggressively. She hired a private lawyer to sue her former employer for sex discrimination. (First Office Management will not discuss the case while it is in litigation.)
The chances of women such as Soreo-Yasher winning their cases just went up considerably, say labor lawyers. That`s because late last fall Congress passed a civil rights law.
”The new law puts stronger teeth in anti-discrimination laws for women,” says Isabelle Katz Pinzler, director of the Women`s Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union, based in New York.
The Civil Rights Act of 1991-and other recent court decisions-has given women new clout in the workplace. When women are treated unfairly on the job, they can now:
– Ask that their case be tried before a jury.
– Sue as a group when an employer violates the rights of several women in a workplace.
– Ask the courts to judge their case through the eyes of a ”reasonable woman” instead of the long-held legal standard based on how a ”reasonable man” would see the facts.
– Win a case without as much effort; the new law puts more of the burden of proof on the employer, rather than the employee.
Taken together, these changes reverse a trend in court decisions that had made it increasingly difficult for women to win sex-discrimination suits-and impossible for her to impose serious penalties on an employer who violated her rights-no matter how badly she had been treated on the job.
Many observers say that the most important aspect of the new law is that it imposes serious consequences on employers. Under the old civil rights law, passed in 1964, women were entitled only to back pay and reinstatement in their old jobs.
The new law also gives women the right to a jury trial, an important tool, because juries usually are more sympathetic than judges to complaints filed by workers.
A discrimination case that was decided recently by a jury at the state level has been widely cited as what may happen across the U.S.: Barbara Soggs, an American Airlines employee who charged that she had been passed over for a job in favor of a less-qualified, less-experienced man, sued her employer under New York State human rights law. The jury awarded her $7.1 million in damages.
The 1991 civil rights law has its limitations. Congressional supporters had to agree to a cap on damages in discrimination cases: Companies with more than 500 employees are liable for no more than $300,000; the cap is even lower for smaller firms. Still, the right to garner any damages is a big change.
A woman`s point of view also has gained clout in legal circles. Historically courts have relied on the ”reasonable man” standard to decide cases; that is, a judge or jury must decide what a reasonable man would make of the facts of the case. That standard does not always work well for women-a man simply may not understand, for example, what it feels like to be a woman in an office where men hang up nudie calendars or make lewd comments.
But last year a circuit court accepted a new point of view. The judges ruled that incidents of sexual harassment must be judged on the basis of whether a ”reasonable woman” would find the acts offensive, intimidating or hostile.
The plaintiff in this ground-breaking case, Ellison vs. Brady, was Kerry Ellison, an Internal Revenue Service employee in California. One day one of her co-workers, a man whose desk was 20 feet from hers, started asking her out for drinks and lunch. Even though she made it clear that she wasn`t interested, he continued to bug her, writing her long love letters and bizarre notes that made repeated sexual references.
When the harassment escalated, Ellison complained to management. The man was moved to another office. Six months later, without notifying Ellison, management allowed him to return. Terrified of her harasser, she asked for a transfer and then brought suit. The court eventually decided in her favor, ruling that any reasonable woman in Ellison`s shoes would have felt frightened.
One other important court case also has added a weapon in arsenal against discrimination. Women can now sue as a group-which gives them far more power. A federal district judge in Minnesota recently permitted a group of female iron-mine workers to pursue their lawsuit against the Eveleth Taconite Co. as a class action suit, the first time it`s been done. (The female mine workers` have complained that harassment in workplace included sexual graffiti, pinup posters and pinches.)
The day after Anita Hill`s testimony, AT&T`s chairman, Robert E. Allen, placed the company`s entire sexual-harassment policy on its electronic network to make it clear that the communications giant would not tolerate unfair treatment of women. Other large corporations put out press releases to advise their workers and the public that they intend to combat ill-treatment of women. American Express issued a memorandum reaffirming the company`s sexual harassment policy and guidelines. Freada Klein, a Cambridge, Mass., management consultant, predicts that within a year or two, 90 percent of Fortune 500 companies will offer employees training about sexual harassment.
Some firms also are trying to smash the glass ceiling that keeps women from the most senior jobs. According to a Labor Department study of nine Fortune 1000 companies, women represent 37.2 percent of all employees and 16.9 percent of managers. But a mere 6.6 percent of executive-level managers are women.
”The glass ceiling is really sex discrimination that hinders women at every step and every level of the work force,” says Judith L. Lichtman, president of the Women`s Legal Defense Fund, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group. ”Discrimination prevents most women from reaching positions where they can even see the glass ceiling.”
Other companies have set up mentor programs to ensure that women get the help and feedback crucial to career development. Du Pont, for example, has designated a staff member to focus on the careers of women and minorities and to play the role of advocate. If a division is looking for a new person, Bob Brandt, manager of affirmative action and upward mobility, will be brought into the discussion.
”I suggest female candidates who might not have been considered. I keep asking the question `Why not?` to try to break down the stereotypical thinking of what a woman can do,” Brandt says.
”Last year was an energizing year for American women. They`re galvanized,” says Barbara Otto of 9to5, National Association of Working Women. ”Women have finally made the connection that what happens in Washington, D.C., affects what happens to them on the job every day.”
