Challenging Occupational Sexism
Occupational sexism become institutionalized in the U.S. today when women were originally able to join the workforce by men primarily in the 20th Century and were paid up to two-thirds of what male's income were. Since then it is now thought of as "good business" to hire women because they could perform many jobs similar to men, yet give them lesser wages. Groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Organization for Women are established to fight against this discrimination, leading to the creation of groundbreaking laws such as the Equal Pay Act of 1963. However, identifying and challenging sex discrimination in the workplace (on legal grounds) has been argued as being too difficult for the average person to attempt and even harder to prove in court. A Supreme Court case that was vs. Lilly Ledbetter in 2007, recently had a judgment in her favor overturned that had awarded her back pay and damages for several years of receiving disproportionately low pay in comparison to her male counterparts because she waited too long to file suit. After a 5-4 decision, the court states "Federal law states that 'employees must file their discrimination complaints within 180 days of the incident,'" a task that dissenting Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg claimed was unreasonable considering that quite often women have no reason to suspect discrimination until certain unfair patterns develop and they are made aware of them.
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