True or False: Women Win When They Don't Sue

FALSE

Amity is a political conservative...the same brand of woman that runs for office on the platform that the woman's place is at home alla Michelle 'doublespeak' Bachman. Some women have chosen to get ahead individually by selling women out collectively...that's what this is. If suing in the workplace was really working against women, there wouldn't be a female MD in my office, and the sleazy VP would be banging the single mother secretary in the ass as extortion to keep her job and paying her minimum wage...per his own admission.

Sorry kid, this is a fraud.

So the issue is (1) screening out litigious people and (2) narrower hiring preferences based on comanies' past experiences with the legal system. THAT I get. So a revised thesis telling women not to sue for stupid reasons (re: the parket valet checked my ass out so I'll sue the company for all it's worth) will work to their advantage makes sense as opposed to saying that women should keep their yap shut in general (re: my boss tried to rape me). Also, this applies equally to both sexes, there is no need to single out women.

Clarifying one vs the other would make a significant difference, but in the meantime it is what it looks like: a chick making a buck selling out women.

All I know is that if I'm ever a small business owner, no way in hell I'm hiring a woman unless the job is gender critical. Just easier not to have to worry about sexual harassment suits, accusations of discriminatory promotion policies/pay, etc., or maternity leave. Also, don't have to worry about replacing a great employee having a midlife crises and deciding to drop out of the workforce to be a mother. I don't think my position is sexist, in that I'm not making any statements about a woman's ability to perform a job. But why introduce the possibility of headaches when they are unnecessary?

If you treat your employees fairly you shouldn't worry about law suits... If you are treated unfairly definitely keep the law suit as part of your arsenal.

The dichotomy presented in the article is false. There aren't "square" companies that don't discriminate and "cool" companies that might discriminate.

If you are worried about hiring women because of potential law suits, then you should re-examine the way you do business. You're an amateur.

I think this is an issue that gets blown out of proportion by the media. The way it's often portrayed it's as if you have an office where everyone is checking out Playboy at their desks and slapping secretaries on the ass on the one hand, and men won't make eye contact with a woman for fear of a lawsuit on the other.

In reality, most men generally respect sexual boundries in the workplace and women are treated fairly. If any minor issues arise, women flag it and the offender stops doing it (example: one of my analyst buddies back in the day put a swimsuit calendar up in his cube, a female VP felt that was inappropriate and told him to take it down - problem solved). In other words, people are reasonable.

Aside from a few rare cases where there is some serious misconduct, harrassment lawsuits are usually initiated by lower level employees who are either on their way out and are trying to get back at their employer or just think they can make a quick buck. These cases usually drift through the EEOC channels for a year or two and then settle for something like $30 or $40K.

Bottom line, as others have said, unless you have a bunch of idiots at your firm women shouldn't have anything to worry about and you should be fine save a few nuisance law suits from the occasional laid-off AP clerk.

I don't think the problem is women filing sexual harassment lawsuits. I think the problem is America's infatuation with (frivolous) litigation in general (ie. McDonalds hot coffee lawsuit, intellectual property law, etc). Litigation does not add-value to any product, and the millions of dollars companies spend on settlements and court cases could have been used for further innovation.

Here is a quote from William J Baumol's paper, Entrepreneurship: Productive, Unproductive, and Destructive.

The fact that Japan has far fewer lawyers relative to population and far fewer lawsuits on economic issues is often cited as a distinct advantage to the Japanese economy, since it reduces at least in part the quantity of resources devoted to rent seeking. The difference is often ascribed to national character that is said to have a cultural aversion to litigiousness. This may all be very true. But closer inspection reveals that there are also other influences. While in the United States legal institutions such as trebled damages provide a rich incentive for one firm to sue another on the claim that the latter violated the antitrust laws, in Japan the arrangements are very different. In that country any firm undertaking to sue another on antitrust grounds must first apply for permission from the Japan Fair Trade Commission. But such permission is rarely given, and, once denied, there is no legal avenue for appeal.