Sandbox

Sex discrimination lawsuit.

Report warned Wal-Mart of risks before bias suit
by Steven Greenhouse, New York Times, 3 June 2010

The article asserts that “Six years before the biggest sex discrimination lawsuit in history was filed against Wal-Mart Stores, the company hired a prominent law firm to examine its vulnerability to just such a suit. The law firm, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, found widespread gender disparities in pay and promotion at Wal-Mart…”

The article quoted statistics provided by “the plaintiffs’ main expert, Richard Drogin, an emeritus statistics professor at California State University, East Bay, who examined payroll data from 1966 to 2002 that Wal-Mart provided in the case.” These showed “that among hourly workers in 2001,…,women earned about $1,1000, or 6 percent, less a year than men, while among salaried employees, women earned $14,500, or 26 per cent, less.”

The article went on to state that “A study by Joan Haworth, an expert hired by Wal-Mart, disputed that analysis, finding that more than 90 percent of stores had no statistically significant pay differences between men and women.”

Discussion

1. Critique Joan Haworth’s reported analysis. Can you propose an analyses that would be more appropriate?

2. If you wanted to try to refute the claim of discrimination suggested by Professor Drogin’s analysis, how would you proceed?

Submitted by Gerry Hahn