ETHICS CASE ANALYSIS ON – SEX

DISCRIMINATION AT WALMART

COURSE NAME-
ETHICAL ISSUES IN
MANAGEMENT

SUBMITTED TO-
PROF. ABHAY BHAT

SUBMITTED BY-
SHRESHTHA SHAH
ROLL NO.- J002
SAP ID- 80511020008

DATE OF SUBMISSION-
08-10-2020

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Case Facts-
Introduction-
This case majorly talks about the gender discrimination meted out at female
employees when it comes to wage pay and promotions as compared to male
counterparts.
Betty Dukes joined Walmart as a Cashier in California. Owing to her good
performance reviews, she was soon promoted to a Customer Service Manager
within three years. Soon thereafter, she started facing gender discrimination
from her store manager and complained the dame to the District Manager; and
this complaint had taken a huge toll on her whereby she was demoted to the
position from where she had initially started, accompanied by reduction in
wages as well. Whenever there were openings, it was usually filled by a man,
without the opening even being posted. There was no sort of support or
encouragement from the senior authority in terms of opportunities.

Suing for Discrimination-

In 2001, Betty was joined by five other female workers to jointly file a
complaint against Walmart for discrimination against women. Their charges
were based on the fact that not only did the local Walmart stores show such
discrimination, but it was prevalent against all female employees in the past five
years.
Although the suit was filed by six women on the charges of discrimination on a
personal basis, the evidence that sex-discrimination prevails in Walmart can be
seen from the statistical data of the distribution of female employees and their
position in the company. The female employees alleged that they were less
likely to be promoted compared to their male counterparts. There was a
discrimination even in the pay structure, that lagged behind that of men.
According to the executives of Walmart, the company has a strict policy against
gender bias, and there is hardly any evidence against the store managers who
exhibited this bias consciously. The company has uniform procedures for all
stores in terms of hiring, training, job assignments, pay and promotion, and
ethics. The company also has a unique corporate culture, the “Walmart Way”,
that is strongly fostered amongst its employees. The company evaluated
employees based on their understanding and commitment to the Walmart Way.

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Walmart’s Defence-
Walmart objected vigorously and defended itself against the charges of gender
discrimination, to bring the lawsuit for all female employees. The company said
that the suit should seek to redress the charges claimed by the six women in
their respective cases, who were victims of sex discrimination. Moreover, each
of the six women’s cases are different, hence the company should be allowed to
defend itself on the basis of each case. It also stated the importance of giving
leeway to the store managers to make decisions in response to local situations,
as it is the largest private employer in the United States, and it has more than 1
million employees and approximately 3400 domestic stores. With so many
decisions that has to be made, they might have faltered in some cases, but
Walmart insisted these local problems does not indicate an issue with the
company’s policies and procedures.
Walmart also defended itself by saying that one should not extrapolate the
wrongs that happened in these six cases to generality of the entire company. Just
because some women were victims of discrimination does not mean that all the
female employees also faced the same issue. Walmart also submitted proof from
its company details showing that there are no significant gender disparities in
almost 93 percent of the stores. These studies also showed that males were
favoured in only 5 percent of the stores, whereas females in the remaining 2
percent of the stores. The company concludes by saying that based on the
evidence that it provided, if at all any discrimination had occurred, it was not
system-wide, but sporadic and widely varied.
Finally, Walmart contended that discrimination is a problem that is prevalent in
the larger part of the society, and the company should not be expected to solve
this issue alone. It also gave examples stating that the departments of
kitchenware and child’s clothing might be their own discretion and preference.
A company spokesperson also said that such societal issues should not be
confused with Walmart practices. It also said that women might have a
comparatively lesser interest in a managerial position, by giving an example that
only 12 percent of females applied when there was a vacancy of 17 percent for
positions. The company said that it is difficult to identify the causes of the
disparities and correct it.

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Critical Perspective-
Key Issues-
This pattern of discrimination based on the type of work, pay structure, training,
and future opportunities is not the result of non-discriminatory factors. Rather, it
is because of an on-going and continuous practice of intentional gender
discrimination. Plaintiffs are informed and believe that such policies and
practices include, but not limited to:
a. Not posting promotion openings, thereby leading to failure to ensure that all
employees are well informed of an opportunity to seek promotion and desirable
assignments and training.
b. Having an unweighted and subjective criterion utilized by almost all male
managerial workforce in making assignments, training, pay, performance
review and promotional decisions. Even where the company policy states
objective requirements, these requirements are often applied in an inconsistent
manner and ignored at the discretion of management.
c. Bias based on gender stereotypes while making employment decisions such
as assignments, promotions, pay and training.
d. Pre-bias and “grooming” of male employees for promotion, favourable
assignments and training.
e. Maintenance of job categories and departments based on gender-segregation.
f. Deterrence and discouragement of female employees from seeking
recognition, advancement, training, and preferred assignments and pay.
g. Lower wage compensation to female employees when compared to similarly
situated men.
h. Assigning females to low paying positions, and positions with lesser scope of
advancement than those given to men, and advancing women more slowly
compared to the similarly situated male employees.
i. Providing less training to women employees and managers as compared to
that given to male employees and managers.
j. Harassment to female employees with regards to promotion and subjecting
them to a biased and hostile work environment.
k. Having a pre-requisite with regards to advancement to management jobs, that
employees should be willing to relocate, often to significantly distantly located
stores, and applying this policy to require frequent and substantial relocations of
its managers without any reasonable justification. Plaintiffs are further informed

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and they believe that the relocation policy is applied disparately between male
and female employees, more-so to the disadvantage of female employees.
l. Retaliating against those women employees who have complained either
internally or externally about Walmart’s treatment meted to them. Walmart
maintains a toll-free telephone number for all the employees of the company,
which it encourages them to use if they have a problem or grievance in their
store or with the store management. Plaintiffs are informed and believe that
Walmart retaliates against women who use this number to report discrimination,
sexual harassment or other unfair working conditions.

Betty Dukes had raised her voice to fight for equal rights and also against
gender discrimination in the workplace. This lawsuit was filed by her in 2001
on behalf of 1.6 million women who had worked at Walmart between 1996 and
2001. Apart from other discriminatory practices pertaining to labour, Walmart
was also accused of paying females less than the male counterparts, and not
considering women for promotion.
Through this case, Ms Duke helped me draw my attention towards the working
condition of the low-paid workers in the so-called huge stores that rule over the
retail landscape.
Despite her good performance reviews and the amount of hard work put in by
her for six years, she was denied from the opportunities to advance in her
career. This reflects on the corporate culture of Walmart where a pattern of
company-wide gender discrimination can be seen.

Personal Views-
From the company statistics, it is evident that women comprised two-thirds of
the hourly employees, but made up less than 14 percent of store managers.
Apart from being paid lesser compared to their male counterparts, if at all they
received a promotion advancement, it was at a very slow pace and at a later
stage. After she complained to the District Manager about this discrimination
meted out to her from the head of her department and the store manager, she
was retaliated by them and was demoted back to the position of a cashier.
According to me, even if they did not wish to get her promoted, they were
wrong when it came to demotion and reduce her wages and hours.
In many local stores, the open positions and promotion opportunities were not
even made known. Many job categories had identified male and female lines of
work. Females were mostly put into departments such as child’s clothing and
kitchenware, which were considered of lesser importance. They were not even

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rotated across various departments so as to get experience and recognition. All
of these reasons discouraged women to submit an application for higher
position as they knew they barely stood a chance of getting selected. Also, the
promotions that were offered to women were highly disproportionate in the
sense that it required them to transfer elsewhere.
The company is also seen putting the entire blame on the society at large, to
wipe off the charges against it. I would agree that this is a societal problem, but
as a company, it should keep a check on the employee grievances. Instead, it
chose to ignore to such levels that low-class labour female (speaking of Betty
Dukes) was demoted and had a decline in the wages.
If I put myself in the shoes of the protagonist, I would have adopted the same
measures and filed charges against the company. The company, despite being
the largest private player in the retail sector, failed and chose to ignore the
employee grievances of female employees. It even started making assumptions
that the females might not be interested in a managerial position, without
getting into the nitty-gritties. The company could have carried out a survey,
before making such false assumptions. Even when the women tried to voice
their grievances to the higher authorities, they were shunned down. This is
something which is not acceptable by any firm, especially from such a giant
player. Moreover, the company is not ready to find a corrective action to the
discrimination that was found out, but on the contrary, keeps blaming it on the
society and is not willing to take the onus of the disparate composition of its
managerial workforce.

References-
[1] Ethics and The Conduct of Business, 8e, John R. Boatright, Jeffery Smith
[2] https://www.aauw.org/resources/legal/laf/past-cases/wal-mart-stores-inc-v-
dukes/

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Plagiarism Report-

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No. of words- 1800