UIC professor’s male bias theory to play big role in Wal-Mart case.
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William T. Bielby. Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Illinois--Chicago.
UIC professor’s male bias theory to play big role in Wal-Mart case
By KIM JANSSEN
Staff Reporterkjanssen@suntimes.com
Last Modified: Mar 29, 2011 02:08AM
A University of Illinois at Chicago professor’s theory that white men have an unconscious bias against women and minorities is likely to be center stage Tuesday when the U.S. Supreme Court considers whether nearly 1.5 million women can join in an employment discrimination lawsuit against Wal-Mart.
Sociology Professor William Bielby — who has taught at UIC since 2007 — has served as a star witness in dozens of discrimination cases against big business. His testimony has proved crucial because it doesn’t rely on “smoking gun” evidence of prejudice, such as a sexist e-mail or memo, to take on what supporters say are “check-box” corporate equality policies.
Legal experts say the Supreme Court’s ruling in the multi-billion dollar Wal-Mart case could have major implications for employment law.
Plaintiffs in the lawsuit allege the world’s largest public corporation has a “culture that is rife with gender stereotypes demeaning to female employees.” They say the company pays women less than men to do the same work and unfairly passes women over for promotion, even though its own data shows women are more experienced and effective.
Wal-Mart denies the charges and argues the handful of California Wal-Mart workers who filed the case aren’t representative of the “potentially millions of women supervised by tens of thousands of different managers.” More than 20 major corporations including Bank of America, Microsoft and Costco are backing it in the fight.
But Bielby, who declined to give an interview, wrote in a report for the trial court that Wal-Mart doesn’t do enough to examine why two-thirds of its low-level hourly paid workers are women while two-thirds of its salaried managers are men. Its policies allow managers in the field to apply gender stereotypes in hiring, promotion and pay decisions, he argued.
Even people “whose personal beliefs are relatively free of prejudice or bias are susceptible to stereotypes,” he wrote, adding that managers make unfair assumptions that women are less ambitious and more interested in their families than their career.
A federal appeals court ruled 6-5 in favour of the plaintiffs last April, with the court finding that “Dr. Bielby presented scientifically reliable evidence.”
But critics — including the academics who coined the term “social framework analysis” that Bielby says he practices — say Bielby’s conclusions go too far because they are based on laboratory studies of students’ reactions to strangers, and not how Wal-Mart managers evaluate employees they may have known for years.
Harvard Prof. Christopher Winship, who has opposed Bielby in several cases, said Bielby’s analysis was “not even-handed,” adding that Bielby tends to dismiss evidence that doesn’t fit his theory.
And Mark Dichter, a Philadelphia attorney who has taken on Bielby in court, said, “the irony is the stereotyping Bielby accuses white males of, he’s doing to them.”
The Supreme Court is not expected to rule before June.
http://www.suntimes.com/business/4551056-460/uic-professors-male-bias-theory-to-play-big-role-in-wal-mart-case.html
Comments
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Lol, these women have been trying to get this suit of the ground for like ten years, courts are still arguing if they even are allowed to bring the suit against Wal Mart in the first place... Wal Mart's lawyer game is not to be ? with
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So let walmart be a business of only males and handicap greeters.
