Here are three of the most infamous sexual-discrimination settlements:
- In 2004, Morgan Stanley paid $54 million to as many as 340 current and former female employees, and recently settled a second sex-discrimination lawsuit to the tune of $46 million. The first lawsuit included allegations that women were groped and subjected to other lewd male behavior, such as stripteases and breast-shaped birthday cakes, reports The New York Times. (See also: Morgan Stanley Settles Gender-Bias Lawsuit for $46M)
- Merrill Lynch paid more than $100 million to more than 900 women who sued the company for sexual discrimination and harassment in the late 1990s, and has since doled out a few million to individual female brokers in more recent lawsuits. One Merrill Lynch broker said she opened a gift box that was left on her desk to find "a dildo, some hand lotion, and a sheet of perverse poetry," reports the Times.
- In 1998, Mitsubishi paid $34 million to up to 400 current and former employees working at a Mitsubishi manufacturing plant in Illinois, according to Online NewsHour. Women working on the plant's production lines said men put "good-sized wrenches" between their legs and pretended they were "extensions of themselves," or slapped women on their behinds and put bananas in their mouths in front of a group as if it were a joke.
This year, data-storage giant EMC faces allegations of holding sales meetings at strip clubs; supervisors licking whipped cream off the breasts of strippers at office functions; and demeaning and vulgar language used against female employees. (See also: More Men Behaving Badly--WSJ Blasts EMC for Sexual-Harassment Lawsuit)
The Pervasive, Sexist Corporate Culture
The reality of sexual harassment in the workplace continues to make headlines in the aftermath of Knicks head coach Isiah Thomas being found guilty on eight of nine charges of sexual harassment. MSG vows to appeal, and Thomas maintains his innocence despite the guilty verdict, reports MSNBC, saying the jury didn't get all the facts.
(See also: B-Word Costs Isiah Thomas, MSG $11.6M in Sex-Harassment Suit)
But what were the facts? Double standards, unwanted advances, cursing at Browne Sanders and calling her "bitch," and later putting his arm around her at a basketball game and telling her how great she looked, as they were presented.
If this is considered acceptable behavior, it appears not much has changed since the "boom-boom room" case more than a decade ago, when three women in a New York Smith Barney office sued the firm because their male coworkers set up a basement party room with a toilet seat hanging from the ceiling and a garbage bin they used to mix drinks.
Despite a series of high-profile sexual-harassment lawsuits facing the investment-banking and other industries in the mid 1990s, the sexual harassment hasn't let up. Each year, 11 percent of white women and 14 percent of women of color report sexual harassment in the form of teasing, jokes, remarks or questions, according to the Level Playing Field Institute. In many industries, there remains a "frat-house mentality" that creates a "social acceptance" of sexual harassment and a "blame the victim" mindset.
In a three-part interview series, Kimberley Copeland, who worked for a major investment bank, talks to DiversityInc about being "squeezed" at the waist by an old man on a daily basis, propositioned by married, senior-level, male employees at office events and made uncomfortable on her commute by a man who told her he secretly hoped the gym bag she carried on the train was an overnight bag, and that she had been coming from his house. Copeland talks about having to "compromise" and accept this harassment in order to succeed in her job, and the "hush-hush" she got when trying to inform human resources about her situation. (Click on the audio icons and links to the right for Kimberley's story.)
Often, business occurs in "barrooms and bathrooms," said Copeland, and ambitious women may find themselves attending "meetings" in such places to avoid missing crucial opportunities.
Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, for example, writes about attending her first management meeting at a strip club in her memoir Tough Choices. She had to walk across a platform of half-clothed dancers to get to the table where her colleague sat with a client.
Excluding women from committee positions, putting your arm around them as Thomas did to Browne Sanders, or intentionally holding meetings in places where they may be uncomfortable are some examples of how sexual harassment creates a hostile work environment. In industries where women are underrepresented, such as investment banking and automotive, these incidences tend to be more prevalent.
Sex-discrimination charges, which may include sexual harassment, accounted for 30.7 percent of all those filed with the EEOC in 2006--the exact same percentage as in 1997, and second only to race-discrimination charges. The EEOC received 12,025 sexual-harassment charges in 2006, down from 15,889 in 1997, and recouped $48.8 million in monetary benefits. Click here for more sexual-harassment statistics.
(See also: Avoid Lawsuits: Find Out Now If You Are Breaking the Law)
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