February
19, 2007
Women and
Wal-Mart
Since
starting to shop there in the 1980s, I have had a love-hate relationship
with Wal-Mart.
I find some
positive aspects to the company. Not being fashion-forward at all, I
don’t mind buying clothes at Wal-Mart because they are cheap – and very
often not any worse in quality than apparel costing two or three times
as much at department stores. I also admire Wal-Mart’s long-standing
environmental consciousness. Its goal of selling one million compact
fluorescent light bulbs a year by 2008 is highly laudable, as is its
decision to price many generic drugs at $4.00 per 30-day prescription. I
benefit from that policy every month.
Then there
are the things I don’t like about Wal-Mart, such as its relentless
anti-union stance and its tendency to hire part-time hourly employees to
avoid paying for health insurance, forcing many of its workers to rely
on public assistance to pay medical bills. The company’s shift to
scheduling that matches staff levels with store traffic has some
employees reporting a loss in work hours, which Wal-Mart denies is
happening.
(Full
disclosure: I have minor financial ties to a company competing with
Wal-Mart in selling groceries in the Dallas/Fort Worth market.)
Thanks to a
recent ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the
retailing behemoth is now vulnerable to billions of dollars in damages
in the nation’s largest class-action discrimination lawsuit. By a 2-1
vote, federal appeals judges have allowed to go to trial a case that
involves as many as 1.5 million current and former female employees.
These women allege that Wal-Mart discriminated against them in pay and
promotions because of their gender. Wal-Mart plans to ask the court to
reconsider its finding.
Although
Wal-Mart is innocent until proven guilty in court, I would not be
surprised if ultimately, after much obfuscation and delaying tactics,
the verdict goes against the company. In my two decades of shopping at
Wal-Marts and Sam’s Club warehouse stores, they always seemed to me to
be top-heavy with men as managers and executives, while women invariably
fill low-rank jobs like cashier. In fact, I have yet to run across a
male cashier at any Wal-Mart store, although I do recall a couple at the
Sam’s Club nearest my home.
Why do I
continue to patronize Wal-Mart/Sam’s Club? If I started boycotting
businesses that discriminate against women, I would not have many
shopping options. Even if it cannot be demonstrated in a court of law,
discrimination against women is still widespread throughout the U.S.
workplace. About the only business in which a woman can be cut a break
is a company she owns and operates. Perhaps that’s why women are the
nation’s top entrepreneurs, forming new companies at twice the national
growth rate for all such new business ventures, according to the U.S.
Census Bureau.
And at the
risk of paying more at the cash register, I hope Wal-Mart loses the
case. That could be merely sour grapes. I still have vivid memories of
being paid less than male colleagues with less experience to perform far
better at precisely the same job. Women employed full-time still earn
only 81 percent of their male counterparts’ weekly median wages, the
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics finds. That number was 73 percent when I
started my career.
A huge
verdict against Wal-Mart might shake up the rest of corporate America.
Wal-Mart is the world’s biggest retailer, number two on the Fortune 500
list of largest U.S. publicly held companies. If Wal-Mart gets nailed
for discriminating against women, maybe other businesses will sit up and
take notice. Maybe. It all depends on how much money eventually is
involved, of course.
For all the
corporate hot air about “diversity” and “inclusiveness” in employment,
the U.S. workplace remains more inviting to and rewarding for men than
women. Unless and until we resolve our national ambivalence about
women’s success, whether in politics, the professions, the sciences,
management or as business owners, not much will change.
Such
resolution, however, would involve re-examining the entire way we regard
women as human beings and their presumed “place” in the world. This type
of introspection has never been high on our national priority list. Most
Americans would probably prefer to have a root canal or pay income taxes
than honestly examine their expectations of women, or of themselves. We
pay a high price, economically and spiritually, for our continued
ignorance of self.
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