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Example research essay topic: Ann Hopkins Case Analysis - 2,330 words

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Ann Hopkins worked as a senior manager for the accounting firm of Price Waterhouse for four years, Hopkins became a candidate for partnership in 1984. After being denied partnership, she filed suit against Price Waterhouse charging that the firm had discriminated against her on the basis of sex by allowing gender stereotypes to heavily influence the firm's employment practices. During her employment with Price Waterhouse, Hopkins proved herself a hard-working, dedicated employee. In the year of her proposal for partnership, for example, Hopkins generated more business and billed more hours than any other candidate. She was also heavily praised by her supervisors for maintaining excellent relations with her clients as well as for landing a highly coveted $ 25 million contract with the Department of State that, according to Price Waterhouse, was a "leading credential" for the firm in competing for other government contracts. Nevertheless, Hopkins' bid for partnership was denied by the firm.

The primary reason stated by the firm for Hopkins' rejection was her perceived lack of "interpersonal skills" and her alleged mistreatment of staff. Indeed, most of the negative comments made about Hopkins during the evaluation period had to do with her deficient social graces and her aggressive, overbearing style. Many of the negative comments made about Hopkins by the partners, however, reflect their bias against her not as a colleague but as a woman. One partner criticized Hopkins for acting too "macho" while another claimed that she "overcompensated for being a woman. " Yet another partner suggested that Hopkins "take a course at charm school, " and the firm's Policy Board, after informing Hopkins of her rejection, recommended that she "walk more femininity, talk more femininity, dress more femininity, wear make-up, have her hair styled, and wear jewelry. " In light of these comments, the United States Supreme Court found that Price Waterhouse did discriminate against Ann Hopkins by permitting gender stereotypes to play a significant role in its decision to reject her candidacy for partnership. The Court further held that when a plaintiff in a federal anti-discrimination suit "proves that her gender played a motivating part in an employment decision, the defendant may avoid a finding of liability only by proving by a preponderance of the evidence that it would have made the same decision even if it had not taken the plaintiff's gender into account. " In other words, when a plaintiff effectively shows that gender-bias did influence a particular employment decision, the defendant may then escape a finding of liability by demonstrating that it would have made the same decision regardless of the plaintiff's gender. Thus, in cases where an employment decision is made for both legitimate and discriminatory reasons, the defendant may avoid liability by showing that it would have made the same decision in the absence of the discriminatory factor.

The Court's holding in the Price Waterhouse case reflects the conventional 'equality approach' to sex discrimination cases. Under this approach, courts are required to determine whether an allegedly discriminatory employer would have made the same decision about a female employee had her gender not been taken into account. In order to find that unlawful discrimination has occurred, therefore, a court must decide that a woman would have received different treatment had she been a man of similar qualifications and skills. The equality approach, however, is not "forceful enough to withstand obstacles thrown up by men who will not promote women considered either 'too feminine' or 'too masculine' because [it] does not recognize that issues other than actual competence may affect employment decisions. " By asking only whether a woman is 'similarly situated' to her male counterparts, the equality approach ignores the fact that women and men are judged according to different social standards, and that those standards tend to harm working women. Gender stereotypes, to the extent that they dictate the proper roles and traits of men and women, as well as the characteristics associated with excellence on the job, greatly disadvantage women. A recent study of workplace psychology asked workers to classify specific character traits according to gender and then to rank those traits by their relative contribution to successful job performance.

The study found that, in general, men were perceived as independent, objective, and assertive while women were seen as emotional, talkative, friendly, and neat. Not surprisingly, the traditionally 'male' characteristics also tended to far outrank the traits commonly associated with stereotypically 'female' behavior in terms of their perceived relation to excellence on When the very characteristics associated with success in the workplace are the antithesis of norms of proper feminine behavior, working women invariably find themselves caught in an impossible double bind. In order for women to move up in the workplace, they must adopt traditionally 'masculine' forms of behavior. However, women who do not conform to stereotypical notions of womanhood and who are perceived as 'too masculine' run the risk of being regarded by their colleagues as deviants. Although Ann Hopkins' position required that she behave in an 'unfeminine' fashion (i. e. , giving orders, doing business, taking charge, etc. ), she was denied partnership precisely because she was not feminine enough.

Ann Hopkins' aggressive, self-confident leadership style enabled her to achieve a high level of success and praise from her supervisors at Price Waterhouse. The firm, however, denied her candidacy for partnership not because she lacked the necessary qualifications but because she failed to conform to stereotypical expectations of proper 'feminine' behavior. Hopkins was not judged by the partners at Price Waterhouse for her skills and qualifications as an employee but for her status as a woman. In this sense, Hopkins was held up against standards that no man with her qualifications would have been forced to satisfy, or that never would have been an issue due to his gender. Ann Hopkins won her case against Price Waterhouse because she possessed all of the character traits typically associated with masculinity and successful job performance and because she proved substantially 'similar' to her male counterparts in the eyes of the Court. Indeed, not only was Hopkins as diligent and aggressive as the male candidates for partnership, she also succeeded in generating a greater share of business for the firm.

One must consider, however, whether the outcome of the case would have been substantially different had Ann Hopkins been perceived by Price Waterhouse as 'too feminine. ' In such a case, the equality approach would be significantly less effective because, in terms of her qualifications and job skills (i. e. , her lack of independence, assertiveness, etc. ), Hopkins could no longer be deemed substantially 'similar' to her male counterparts. The underlying assumption of the equality approach therefore, is that women deserve equal treatment only to the extent that they are 'similar' to men. To the extent that women are different from men, however, they are no longer entitled to the same rights and protections.

The equality approach thus offers an effective means of protection for women like Ann Hopkins who fit nicely into the structure of the workplace and who are similar to men, while for women who are unlike men and do not conform to the structure of the workplace, it does not. The central weakness of the equality approach lies in its reliance on male-based 'objective's tankards. The comparative standard of the equality approach is rooted in the belief that the male perspective is central and 'universal' while the female perspective is merely tangential. Women are thereby defined in terms of their relative similarity to men while "the partiality of this dominant (i.

e. , male) viewpoint is obscured, largely because it is unstated and presumed. The minority view, in contrast, is regarded as being partial and particular, rather than objective and universal. " By adopting the male standard as the 'objective' and 'universal' one, the equality approach reinforces women's inferior status in the workplace. The implicit male bias of the comparative standard reflects the very attitudes discrimination law exists to undermine: that the image of success, of potency, of what it means to do a job is the image of a man. In its failure to recognize the different social standards for men and women, the equality approach fails to adequately address the root causes of women's inequality in society and on the job. The Dominance Approach: Sexual Harassment and the Subordination of Working Women One alternative approach to sex discrimination law, the dominance approach, has attempted to address women's relative lack of power within the male-defined structure of the workplace.

Most widely used in cases of sexual harassment, which has been found by the courts to be a form of gender discrimination actionable under federal anti-discrimination laws, the dominance approach attempts to recognize the inherent disadvantage women face when judged according to male standards and to confront the way in which sexual harassment reinforces women's inferior status in the workplace. Where this approach has been applied by the courts, however, the results have been less than satisfying. In defining the proper standard of review for sexual harassment cases, the courts have tended to evoke outmoded stereotypes regarding women's sexuality and to judge female plaintiffs according to male-defined standards. The Supreme Court's 1989 decision in Price Waterhouse dealt with a woman who did not conform to traditional feminine norms. Ann Hopkins was a successful senior manager and partner candidate at Price Waterhouse ("PW"). The evidence at trial indicated that some partners involved in assessing the proposal that Hopkins be made a partner reacted negatively to her personality because she was a woman.

Justice Brennan's opinion, joined by Justices Marshall, Blackmun and Stevens, summarized the evidence: One partner described her as "macho"; another suggested that she "overcompensated for being a woman"; a third advised her to take "a course at charm school. " Several partners criticized her use of profanity; in response, one partner suggested that those partners objected to her swearing only "because it's a lady using foul language. "Another supporter explained that Hopkins "ha[d] matured from a tough-talking somewhat masculine hard-nosed mgr to an authoritative, formidable, but much more appealing lady ptr candidate. " But... the man who... bore responsibility for explaining to Hopkins the reasons for the Policy Board's decision to place her candidacy on hold... delivered the coup de grace: in order to improve her chances for partnership, [he] advised, Hopkins should "walk more femininely, talk more femininely, dress more femininely, wear make-up, have her hair styled, and wear jewelry. " PW tabled the issue of Hopkins's partnership in 1982 and refused to reconsider her in 1983. Hopkins filed a Title VII action, and expert testimony was introduced at trial opining that sex stereotyping had influenced the partnership selection process. Hopkins prevailed at trial and on appeal.

Although the issue before the Supreme Court on PW's petition for certiorari was burden allocation in mixed-motive cases under Title VII, a plurality of Justices (Brennan, Marshall, Blackmun, Stevens, and O'Connor in a separate concurrence) characterized PW's error as impermissible reliance upon partner comments contaminated by stereotypes about sex-based traits, particularly the "trait" of aggressiveness Hopkins displayed. Brennan put it this way: Hopkins showed that the partnership solicited evaluations from all of the firm's partners; that it generally relied very heavily on such evaluations in making its decision; that some of the partners' comments were the product of stereotyping; and that the firm in no way disclaimed reliance on those particular comments, either in Hopkins " case or in the past. Certainly a plausible and, one might say, inevitable conclusion to draw from this set of circumstances is that the Policy Board in making its decision did in fact take into account all of the partners' comments, including the comments that were motivated by stereotypical notions about women's proper deportment. We are beyond the day when an employer could evaluate employees by assuming or insisting that they matched the stereotype associated with their group, for in forbidding employers to discriminate against individuals because of their sex, Congress intended to strike at the entire spectrum of disparate treatment of men and women resulting from sex stereotypes.

An employer who objects to aggressiveness in women but whose positions require this trait places women in an intolerable and impermissible catch 22: out of a job if they behave aggressively and out of a job if they do not. Title VII lifts women out of this bind. As the Court of Appeals characterized it, Ann Hopkins proved that Price Waterhouse "permitted stereotypical attitudes towards women to play a significant, though unquantifiable, role in its decision not to invite her to become a partner... At this point Ann Hopkins had taken her proof as far as it could go. She had proved discriminatory input into the decisional process, and had proved that participants in the process considered her failure to conform to the stereotypes credited by a number of the decision makers had been a substantial factor in the decision. There is no doubt that Congress considered reliance on gender or race in making employment decisions an evil in itself.

As Senator Clark put it, "the bill simply eliminates consideration of color [or other forbidden criteria] from the decision to hire or promote. " ("What the bill does... is simply to make it an illegal practice to use race as a factor in denying employment"). Reliance on such factors is exactly what the threat of Title VII liability was meant to deter. Ann Hopkins was a senior manager in an office of Price Waterhouse when she was proposed for partnership in 1982. She was neither offered nor denied admission to the partnership; instead, her candidacy was held for reconsideration the following year.

When the partners in her office later refused to re propose her for partnership, she sued Price Waterhouse under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, charging that the firm had discriminated against her on the basis of sex in its decisions regarding partnership. Judge Gesell in the Federal District Court forthe District of Col...


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Research essay sample on Ann Hopkins Case Analysis

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