Ida Phillips applied for a job at a missile plant outside of Orlando, Fla. The business had a hiring policy that excluded mothers with children younger than kindergarten and Phillips had seven children– some of whom were in preschool. Phillips claimed that she was denied the job because of her sex under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This was a complicated case because the company had women on their staff, so proving that there was sex discrimination was no easy task.
It turns out that the Supreme Court unanimously held that Phillips was discriminated against because she was a mother. However, they sent the case back to the lower courts to allow the corporation to present evidence that said motherhood impacts one’s ability to work. The Supreme Court judges claimed that they struggled with the idea that all genders are equipped to do the same jobs.
Why One Might Agree With This Ruling:
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Mothers have realistic expectations of what they can and can’t do. While mothers tend to walk into motherhood with pressures to do everything to the best of their abilities, they quickly realize this isn’t possible and that they can do it all. Nearly two-thirds of mothers who are caregivers have been able to stay at their job. Mothers are great for a company’s financial performance because they are more productive at work and become more decisive when saying what they want.
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Hiring a mother means you’re hiring someone who wants to be there. It’s impossible to be perfect at everything you do. When you’re a mother this is something you learn quickly, and having the ability to hold a job while raising a child is something that can make mothers feel accomplished. It has actually taught mothers that it’s okay to have multiple passions and being able to hold on to these passions have allowed them to not feel like they were losing themselves at the extent of the child.
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Understanding Ida Phillips’ background. Ida Phillips was working as a waitress earning $51 a week with seven children whose ages ranged from preschool to 16. The ad that the missile plant posted called for 100 people with high school diplomas to work on an electronic component at the missile plant. The job also paid $100-$125 per-week, and because Phillips fit the qualifications, she submitted her application. Nowhere in the ad did it say anything about there being a certain amount of hours that were required to work. If the ad claimed they needed a certain amount of hours to work, then maybe Phillips wouldn’t have submitted the application because she didn’t know if she could balance motherhood with her job. However, they had other women on the job and didn’t specify the hours they needed her to work, so in my opinion, the Supreme Court’s ruling was correct.
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Just because there are women on the staff, doesn’t mean that the company isn’t sexist. Pinterest is a prominent example of this, they recently paid a former executive $22.5 million dollars to settle multiple gender discrimination lawsuits and are facing more from shareholders who’ve noticed additional discrimination on the basis of race and sex. In August, former Chief Operating Officer Françoise Brougher claimed she faced pay discrimination and sexist behavior from other executives. In December, current and former employers claimed that these allegations created a buzzing culture of discrimination on race and sex.
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Title VII was made to prevent this situation. An article in The Atlantic discussed Phillips’ case and stated that “Title VII was made to outlaw employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, national orgin, religion and sex.” This case was the first time that Title VII had been brought up under the interpretation by the Supreme Court. The Titles ban on unequal treatment of women was added to the legislation at the last minute.
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Phillips’ case is similar to others. In 1978, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power v. Manhunt ruled that holding a requirement for female workers to make a bigger pension fund contribution than their male counterparts violates Title VII on the basis of sex. Similarly, in Hishon v King & Spalding, the Supreme Court found that Title VII required a law firm to consider women in the partnership when dating a fellow employee.
Why One Might Disagree with This Ruling:
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Sexism isn’t sexism if I don’t understand it. Well, let’s change that. There are three main types of sexism that tend to show up in the workplace. The first one is benevolent sexism which is what happens when people feel the automatic need to protect women in the workplace. The second one is hostile sexism which is open misogyny where someone thinks of women as manipulative, angry and power-hungry through seduction. The third and final one is ambivalent sexism which are the traditions and gender-norms people put on women.
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Mothers are busier than the typical female. Moms aren’t better at multitasking, they just do it more often. More than 60% of moms handle household chores themselves, and on average, have an hour to themselves a day. Society painted this myth so that people would be less willing to help mothers.
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Ida Phillips wasn’t qualified for the job. Phillips’ most prominent work-experience was that she was a greeter at Walmart for seven years. For the most part, she lived a pretty normal life doing activities like bowling and bingo, but does that give her the qualifications to do the job? If her application was reviewed, there’s a chance she wouldn’t get the job.
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Title VII was a mistake, therefore, this case doesn’t count. The Federal agency charged with enforcing this law didn’t think it was going to do anything. In fact, not long after Title VII was enacted, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission executive director said that this was a fluke conceived out of wedlock. They argued that because the company wasn’t discriminating against women in general, the case should get thrown out.
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The Constitution doesn’t explicitly protect women in the workplace. The US Constitution doesn’t guarantee women’s rights. The 14th amendment gives everyone equal protection, but as we’ve seen throughout 2020, that can have different interpretations. Federal laws give women specific equal protections such as Title XII, Title X, and the 1964 Civil Rights Act, but those can be rewritten. This case has informal legitimacy which means people can argue that it doesn’t hold value.
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Men are less emotional than women. When Supreme Court Justices are asked if they should emphasize logic or emotion, male justices tend to lean towards logic and female justices tend to lean towards emotion, according to Jacobs. After analyzing Supreme Court briefs, emotionally charged words such as love, hate, grief and annoyance are characterized as feminine briefs.
