COMPANY THOUGHT SHE WASN’T INTERESTED IN ADVANCING HER CAREER
After an Iowa Walmart denied a woman a promotion to a department manager position, the company informed the individual that she was passed over because she had young kids at home and that “management assumed she was not interested in advancing her career at Walmart long-term.”
Believing that conduct violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) filed suit (Civil Action No. 4:22-cv-00037-SMR-SBJ) in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa, seeking monetary damages and injunctive relief.
In a settlement announced in early January, Walmart not only agreed to pay $60,000 to the impacted individual, but will train its management personnel on the law pertaining to sex discrimination.
In a written statement, Gregory Gochanour, the regional attorney for the EEOC’s Chicago District Office, noted that “Discriminating against a woman because of stereotypes about working mothers is sex discrimination, plain and simple …. Women with children deserve the opportunity to be judged fairly in the workplace based on their qualifications and abilities, not on assumptions about their commitment to their careers. The EEOC is pleased that the employee in this case has received a measure of justice for the opportunity that she was wrongfully denied.”
Now how childish was that?
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