Angela Stich

"I've been working for Wal-Mart for fourteen years and raised three kids while working for the company," asserts a short blonde woman in a matching pantsuit. "I've been very satisfied with the opportunities."

Beginning in mid-2003, American television viewers were bombarded with commercials featuring women who were overwhelmingly pleased with their Wal-Mart careers. The ads happened to coincide with the onset of Dukes vs. Wal-Mart, the largest class-action sexual-discrimination lawsuit in history and a public-relations nightmare for the company.

But this satisfied Wal-Mart employee isn't an actress and isn't on television. Mary Gemini is one of a handful of Wal-Mart managers who have come to Women and Children First Bookstore to challenge the claims of Liza Featherstone, who is reading from her book "Selling Women Short: The Landmark Battle for Workers' Rights at Wal-Mart."

"I started at $5 an hour and I'm a district manager now," says Gemini, who raves about the company's stock options as Featherstone nods and smiles politely. According to Featherstone's research, Gemini is a minority: although two-thirds of Wal-Mart's hourly employees are female, women make up only one-third of salaried managers, and women are paid less than men in nearly every single position in the company.

Featherstone tells the stories of the women behind the lawsuit led by Betty Dukes, a 54-year-old conservative Christian Wal-Mart employee in Pittsburg, California. Like Gemini, Dukes was hired as a $5-per-hour cashier. After being promoted to Customer Service Manager two years later, Dukes, who proclaims herself "no women's libber," began to experience harsh discrimination. According to Featherstone, she was denied the training she needed to advance further while that training was given to younger, less experienced male employees. When she complained, she was denied promotion and demoted back to her cashier job.

The resulting lawsuit opened up a Pandora's Box of similar, or even worse, claims. Featherstone, who speaks again at Seminary Co-Op Bookstore in Hyde Park on November 18, recounts the story of a woman, pregnant and about to become a single mother, who found out that a male coworker made $8,000 more per year. When she confronted her manager for an explanation, she was told that the man "had a family to support." Another woman, asking why her male co-workers made more money, was told, "God made Adam first, so women will always be second to men."

Perhaps inadvertently, Gemini compares Wal-Mart to an organized religion, claiming that the "knuckleheads" described by Featherstone are just like religious radicals or "bad apples who make the whole company look bad." The company culture Featherstone describes in her book is eerily similar to that of an organized religion; rich with shared language, values and rituals. Many of the plaintiffs--including Betty Dukes--are so faithful to the core values of the company that they still work for Wal-Mart. Dukes wants to force the company to live up to its promises to women, as Featherstone quotes her: "I want to work for the Wal-Mart on the TV. Because it's the real world when you get to my store."

(2004-11-17)

Also by Angela Stich

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