It is heartwarming and inspiring to hear children talk about their career aspirations and to look forward to the fulfilling work they can do and the friendships they can form with their close coworkers and with colleagues in their wider professional field. Even when you achieve career goals that you have held since childhood, reality eventually sets in. No matter how awesome your professional mentors were when you were a student, the social environment at your workplace can be as ugly as the most corroded corners of the Internet.
The trouble with gender roles is that you can never be good enough for anyone. There is always someone out there who thinks you are not doing a good enough job of being a man or not doing a good enough job of being a woman. Some of these people are quite outspoken about their disapproval of your physical appearance, romantic relationships, professional activities, or whatever else they think you are doing wrong. Most of the time, you can deal with this just by ignoring the people who have nothing better to do than find fault with you; you can unfollow their social media channels or, if they are people you know personally, respond to their text messages only when you feel like it.
The real trouble happens when people’s disapproving views about men, women, or the kind of man or woman that you are, interfere with your work, when the haters are in a position to facilitate or interfere with your career advancement or professional, and therefore economic, wellbeing. The Boulder sex discrimination lawyers at HKM Employment Attorneys LLP can help you if you have experienced sex discrimination or sexual harassment at work.
Sex Discrimination in the Workplace Can Be Blatant, or it Can Be Death by a Thousand Cuts
The definition of employment discrimination is broader than simply firing someone because of a personal characteristic or refusing to hire people from a certain demographic group. It includes any adverse action taken by an employer if a protected characteristic of the employee was the employer’s motivation for taking the adverse action. Adverse actions are anything the employer does that negatively affects the employee. For example, they can include refusing to hire the job candidate, refusing a current employee’s request for a promotion or accommodation, or changing the employee’s job duties or schedule on the employer’s own initiative when the employee did not request this. Of course, firing an employee or failing to renew the employee’s contract also counts as an adverse action.
Perhaps the most adverse of adverse actions is a hostile work environment, where, without taking any official actions against you, the employer simply makes your experiences at work difficult and unpleasant. A hostile work environment is the workplace equivalent of bullying. It makes you miserable, but it hides in plain sight when you complain about it, making you look like you are overreacting. When the bullying focuses on your sex, it is sexual harassment, even if it does not include unwanted flirtation or romantic overtures.
Protected characteristics are personal or demographic characteristics that it is illegal for employers to target when taking adverse actions against employees. Employers can and should take adverse actions against employees because of employee misconduct or poor performance of work duties, but they should not take adverse action against an employee because of who the employee is. Sex is only one of many protected characteristics. Others include race, religion, age, disability, marital status, veteran status, sexual orientation, pregnancy, and whether the employee has children.
It Might Be Sex Discrimination Even if You and the Perpetrator are the Same Sex
Discussions of sex discrimination in the popular media, and even in job training materials, tend to assume that it usually takes the form of men discriminating against women. For example, a group of female employees of a tech company recently sued their employer, alleging that men in their organization routinely got promoted, with all the pay raises that those promotions entail, while the women’s applications for promotion were consistently met with rejection, even when they had similar qualifications and work accomplishments to their male coworkers. Other lawsuits have focused on a “frat house basement” workplace culture, where male employees frequently made crude and offensive comments about their female coworkers and excluded them from social and professional opportunities.
Sex discrimination encompasses more than that. The discrimination can also focus on your gender expression or gender presentation. This can include your clothing or hairstyle, as long as these do not violate any rules specifically stated in your employer’s policies. If a coworker frequently criticizes your physical appearance, it is probably sex discrimination.
Your coworkers’ behavior might be sex discrimination even if the aggressors are the same sex as you. Almost all instances of “mean girl” behavior in the workplace, where women bully other women, count as sex discrimination. This means that, if the other women in your workplace consistently belittle you, you might have grounds to file a sex discrimination complaint. This is true whether the focus of their cruelty is your appearance, your views on gender roles, whether or not you have children, or any other focus related to you being a woman.
Getting Justice After Experiencing Sex Discrimination in the Workplace
People who experience sex discrimination at work have the right to file an employment discrimination complaint. The employment discrimination claim process begins with initiating an investigation with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). The EEOC will record your complaints and then attempt to corroborate them by interviewing other employees at your organization and reviewing your organization’s records. If the EEOC finds that your claims have merit, it will give you official authorization to sue your employer, and then you can file your sex discrimination lawsuit in court.
Contact HKM Employment Attorneys, LLP, About Sex Discrimination
The Boulder employment lawyers at HKM Employment Attorneys, LLP, can counsel you about sex discrimination claims. Contact the employment lawyers at HKM Employment Attorneys LLP in Boulder, Colorado, to set up a consultation.
