It is difficult to have a conversation with your friends or family about sex discrimination, because your interlocutors will quickly deviate from the subject of the unfair treatment you have experienced at work and end up in an angry tirade about your friend’s or relative’s views about the opposite sex. Looking for advice on social media is even worse, because the content resembles your cousin’s diatribe, but you know your cousin’s backstory in ways that you don’t know the backstory of the person who posted the TikTok video. Fortunately, there is more clarity in the laws about sex discrimination than there is in popular discourse about the sexes. If your employer treats you unfairly, whether financially or in terms of interpersonal interactions, because you are a man or because you are a woman, you have the right to file an employment discrimination complaint. The Bozeman sex discrimination lawyers at HKM Employment Attorneys LLP can help you if you have experienced sex discrimination in the workplace.
Sex Discrimination Can Affect Men, Too
Employment discrimination is when an employer takes an adverse action against an employee because of a protected characteristic of the employee and not because of the employee’s misconduct or substandard work performance. The Montana Human Rights Act lists sex as a protected characteristic, along with race, religion, age, national origin, marital status, and disability. Federal laws list additional protected characteristics, too.
Adverse actions that count as discrimination if they are based on protected characteristics include refusal to hire, undesired changes to an employee’s tasks, schedule, or work location, excessive scrutiny of the employee’s work, unfairly negative performance reviews, denial of promotions or raises for which the employee is eligible, and termination of employment. If you file a discrimination complaint, the burden of proof is on you to show that the protected characteristic was your employer’s true motivation for taking the adverse action. Your employer will argue that they were justified in taking the adverse action and will point to things you did wrong, which your employer claims warrant the adverse action.
A case of sex discrimination might involve a woman receiving unfair treatment in a company where most of the employees, or at least most of the ones in supervisory and decision-making roles, are men. She might contribute equally to a lucrative project with several male coworkers, but some or all of them might receive pay raises or bonuses, and she might not. She might have requested promotions or changes to her work situation, only to have management refuse her requests, while the management might grant similar requests to male employees the first time they ask. When she complains to human resources, they might offer excuses, or they might even tell her that the reason they ignore her complaints is that she complains too much.
This is only one possible scenario involving sex discrimination, though. Sex discrimination does not always involve men discriminating against women. It is also possible that the hiring decisions of a vain businesswoman could amount to sex discrimination. Perhaps she prefers to hire men, and when she hires women, she bullies her female employees until they quit. Maybe she hires both sexes in approximately equal numbers, but while she gets along well with the gay men who work for her, she constantly finds fault with the straight men. Perhaps somewhere there is a woman entrepreneur who takes pride equally in her roles as a mother and as a businessperson. The mothers who work for her experience a pleasant work environment, but the unmarried and childless women experience hostility. In any of these cases, the employees who experienced unfair treatment have grounds for a sex discrimination complaint.
Sexual Harassment is a Form of Employment Discrimination
Not all employment discrimination takes the form of a clearly defined adverse action. A hostile work environment is also an adverse action, and it also counts as employment discrimination. “Hostile work environment” is just the legal term for the harassment and bullying that many of us experience at work. Therefore, sexual harassment in the workplace counts as sex discrimination. Just as there is more to employment discrimination than the popular media stereotypes, there is also more to sexual harassment. These are just some of the many actions that, if persistent, can be grounds for a sex discrimination complaint based on sexual harassment:
- A supervisor, manager, or coworker flirting with you
- Coworkers making derogatory comments about your appearance and suggesting that you are unattractive and undeserving of a romantic partner, regardless of whether you are in a relationship
- Your employer threatening to fire you or take an adverse action against you if you do not welcome romantic overtures from your boss or from customers
- Coworkers making sexually suggestive jokes and comments in your presence, even if they are not specifically about you
What to Do If You Experience Sex Discrimination at Work
If you experience discrimination at work, whether based on sex or another protected characteristic, it is never too soon to talk to an employment lawyer about it. In fact, the sooner you contact a lawyer, the better, because the deadline for contacting the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) about employment discrimination is 45 days after the most recent discriminatory action. You cannot file an employment discrimination lawsuit until after you receive written permission from the EEOC or the Montana Human Rights Bureau. After you file your initial complaint, the Bureau or the EEOC will follow up with an investigation into your workplace. They might find that there are even more instances of sex discrimination in your workplace than you reported in your complaint. If the EEOC or Bureau authorizes you to proceed with your lawsuit, you will already have ample documentation of the discrimination that has been taking place at your workplace.
Contact HKM Employment Attorneys About Sex Discrimination
The Bozeman employment lawyers at HKM Employment Attorneys LLP can give you advice about filing a sex discrimination complaint against your employer. Contact the employment lawyers at HKM Employment Attorneys LLP in Bozeman, Montana, to set up a consultation.
