新视野研究生英语_读说写1Unit 9 What Does Gender课文原文
UNIT 9原文
What Does Sex/Gender Have to Do with Your Job?
by Jeffrey Bernbach
Labor lawyer Jeffrey Bernbach is Specializing in discrimination and sexual harassment cases. Since he graduated from Cornell law school, Bernbach has practiced law for more than 25 years and is called a workplace warrior.In this acticle,he describes the workplace sex/gender discrimination and analyzes the underlying reasons for this phenomenon.While reading,please consider about the topic and see if you are for his view.
1 Although there have been laws against employment discrimination for more than a hundred years in the United States, they varied from state to state.
Not until some thirty years ago did Title VII ( in addition to prohibiting discrimination based on
race, color, religion, and national origin) establish federal uniformity, making it unlawful to discriminate against females-or, for that matter, males—on the basis of their sex.
On-the-job gender discrimination occurs when an employee is treated differently from a person of
the opposite sex under similar circumstances for reasons based solely on the employee’s sex.
2 More Are Less Equal Than Others--Wage Bias
Historically,the most obvious example of sex bias has been paying women less than men for doing the same work.
Although unlawful,the practice is pervasive,and even now,after years of strong feminist efforts to correct this inequity,women still earn only seventy cents for every dollar earned by men.
This is wage inequality,not to be confused with the glass ceiling,which denies women the opportunity to advance up the corporate ladder(which also,of course,impinges on wage increase).
Let's say you're a woman working as a publicity director for a large corporation,and you earn ＄35,000;your male counterpart,publicity director for another division of the same corporation,is earning ＄50,000.
You and he have almost identical curriculum vitae-in fact, you went to the same college,worked together at another company,and then each of you got your"dream job."
3 Although you are worth as much as your male colleague in terms of employee value (or conversely, maybe he is worth only as much as you),
nothing will be done to correct this unfair (read that unlawful) situation for two reasons, both very related:
A) Understandably, you don’t want to quit your jobs-you love it, and protesting could lead to dismissal or, at the very least, rocking the corporate boat to your detriment,
and B) your company knows it can get away with such inequities.
4 So there you are: making seventy cents for every dollar your colleague makes.
This goes on at every level of employment, from factory workers to upper-echelon managers.
It’s sad, unlawful truth of life in the workplace.
And, until recently, most women didn’t challenge it because they wanted to keep their jobs.
5 Among the women who do take on such challenges, the most feared by any employer is a minority female over forty years old.
This is enough to make executives at even the grandest corporations quake in their boots because
such plaintiffs fall into three categories protected by federal and state laws: age, sex, and race.
6 While women are victims of sex discriminations far more often than men, remember that if a male
worker is treated less than his female colleagues because of his sex, he has just as much a right to challenge this inequity.
Here’s a hypothetical example : A man is hired as an editor at a fashion magazine where all the