Ex-Caltech Buyer Awarded $110,000 in Sex-Bias Case

A 72-year-old retired Caltech employee, who first charged the university with sex discrimination more than 14 years ago, has been awarded $110,000 by a federal judge who said the woman had been “improperly classified” by the Pasadena institute.

Dorothy Brynen of Hollywood was “denied a private office, inclusion in meetings, assistance of a subordinate and wages equal to similarly situated males because of her sex,” U.S. District Judge Terry Hatter Jr. said in his ruling,

Brynen’s victory was announced Tuesday at a press conference in the office of her attorney, Gloria Allred, one day after Caltech signed an agreement that it would not appeal the case.

“Women always live in fear of taking risks and of fighting for their rights,” Allred said. “Dorothy challenged a powerful institution, and her victory should provide hope to women that the laws they fought for will protect them against employers who discriminate,”

A spokesman for Caltech, Dennis Meredith, said, “We believe the judgment in the case was wrong. We feel that we emphatically did not discriminate against Ms. Brynen in our promotion practices . . . and that the case took far too long to settle.”

An attorney for Caltech, Nancy McClelland, said Brynen’s case “is not a precedent-setting one,” because it involved one person in one department, and will have little effect on the institute.”

According to court documents, Brynen went to work for the school in 1965, when she was hired as a buyer’s assistant in the purchasing department, after working as a buyer for a plumbing firm for 12 years. When Brynen was hired, the five Caltech buyers were men and the five assistants were women.

From 1967 to 1975, Brynen performed the duties of a buyer and was responsible for purchasing the equipment and supplies for seven departments on campus, the documents say, although she did not hold the title of buyer.

In 1970, Brynen applied for a vacant buyer’s position but was told by Richard Mooney, then head of the purchasing department, that “Caltech was not ready to have a female buyer.”

In 1971, she filed a sex-bias complaint with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The commission ruled in 1976 that she had been discriminated against and gave her the right to sue in 1979. She filed her lawsuit that year.

When she was finally promoted to the buyer position in 1973, she was paid $35 a month less than the men in the job.

Brynen worked as a buyer until 1976, when she was forced to retire, because the trauma of the case complicated an existing heart condition.

“I loved my work . . . the challenge of finding equipment and working with the caliber of people I did,” Brynen said. “I wanted what the men were getting: the title and the salary, not just the responsibility.”

Caltech has been involved in at least two other sex-discrimination cases in the last 10 years, according to Caltech spokesman Meredith.

The most significant case occurred in 1975, when the first woman professor hired by Caltech, Jennijoy LaBelle, left the university after her request for tenure was denied. An Equal Employment Opportunity Commission investigation found that Caltech had 208 tenured men on the faculty and no tenured women. LaBelle was later rehired, after the commission threatened court action.