Sex Bias Suits: A Matter of Dollars--and Sense
In recent years there’ve been quite a few lawsuits over the difference between the sexes--at least to businesses. A Canoga Park father sued J. C. Penney because he wasn’t allowed to go into the little girls’ dressing room with his 5-year-old daughter. Department stores in New York and Chicago were brought before state human rights agencies because they charged for women’s slacks alterations and not for men’s.
A Los Angeles woman sued a children’s haircutting salon for charging girls $12 and boys only $10, and another sued a cleaners for charging her $2.75 when she took in a shirt, and a male friend $2.35 when he later took in the same shirt. A “humiliated” businesswoman even sued a restaurant for giving her male lunch guest the only menu with prices, assuming he was the host.
Many think that these suits frivolous. The “damages”--sometimes very few dollars--seem insignificant, the response to slight insult hysterical: the father and daughter were offered a separate dressing room, the businesswoman could have demanded another menu. Others wonder where such fine insistence on equal rights will end: “I’m basically in sympathy with suits over sex discrimination,” says one man, “but how far do you go before you have unisex everything?”
Violation of Law
Los Angeles lawyer Gloria Allred, who filed the haircut, shirt and restaurant suits above, waves the question aside, noting that these are not questionable rights but rights already granted by legislation. “I’m filing the suits,” she says, “because I believe they’re a violation of the law--in this case California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act prohibiting discrimination by business establishments on the grounds of sex.”
The cases, she adds, are trivial in neither focus nor size. “Some people thought Rosa Parks was trivial for protesting sitting in the back of the bus: the bus got there anyway, didn’t it? And is a case really about $1.75 or $2? There are millions of women being overcharged millions of dollars every day. We’re just raising the issue with one woman and through one case.”
Unfortunately, the issue isn’t always clear: there sometimes is a legitimate “sex-neutral” difference behind the apparent discrimination. Take the shirts. The industry says price simply reflects labor: women’s shirts usually take longer because they can’t be done on standard shirt presses that can process 50 to 60 standard men’s shirts an hour. Women’s blouses and shirts--even “man-tailored” styles--must be done by hand, being “too big or too small or too fancy,” says Karen Graber, spokesman for the International Fabricare Institute in Washington, “with darts or open pleats you don’t want to press down, or dropped shoulders or backs.”
The difference is really shirt detail, not customer gender. Nyberg’s Unique Laundry in Santa Monica, for example, charges 95 cents for a standard men’s shirt that can be done on a shirt press, $2.25 and up (depending on detail) for women’s shirts that can’t, $1.30 and up for a child’s shirt (too small for the press), $1.40 for men’s pullover sports shirts (which don’t open fully), $2.50 for western shirts (the presses smash the snaps) and $3.20 for ruffled tuxedo shirts.
Irked by Explanation
But many cleaners turn justification into discrimination by looking at the customer, not the shirt. Similarly, what precipitated the J. C. Penney suit was not the lack of space for father-and-daughter customers, which Penney immediately tried to correct by offering a substitute room. It was the explanation. The plaintiff was told, says Theresa Traber, his attorney, that unlike mother-and-son shoppers, “the public perception is that men are voyeurs and molesters. Isn’t this like a bar barring sailors because ‘sailors cause fights’ ?”
Some people still question whether such issues should be “clogging the courts.” They don’t always. In New York, as elsewhere, the slacks question went to the state Human Rights Commission because it involved the state human rights law. In California, however, there are state and federal commissions to hear cases involving employment discrimination, for example, but none for such pricing discriminations. “One must go to court,” says Allred.
Besides, she adds, “they always think the courts are being clogged when women assert their rights and seek vindication, but not when businessmen have a contract case.”
Such lawsuits are clearly meant to make the small and private insult public, and to impress businesses, telling them that everyday practices are noticed, that there should be clear non-discriminatory reasons for different prices. Businesses might also reconsider some practices: maybe they could charge the same for plain shirts, men’s or women’s, whatever the size and styling and labor required, just as car washes charge equally for big or little cars, and all-you-can-eat restaurants charge equally for big or little eaters.
It doesn’t even matter how such cases are reported. The menu case, for example, ended up in the anecdote column of a National Restaurant Assn newsletter, “just to bring it to members’ attention,,” says spokesman Jeff Prince, “like a word to the wise: it’s just not the right atmosphere today for that kind of marketing.”
