Sexism in the City II

Yet another tale to depress us all. This is the case of Sarah Sweeney a former partner at DLA Piper (the firm where Nick Clegg's wife works) who had brought a claim against her former employer. She had been made redundant and argued that the fact that she was a woman of child-bearing age was a factor in the decision to dismiss her. She also claimed that she had had her bottom slapped by a senior managing partner at a work function and that another managing partner had told her that women who had children could not and should not work. She was made redundant after announcing that she was pregnant. The firm was able to produce evidence that her card had been marked before she told them she was pregnant. The Tribunal appeared to accept that 'something had happened' in relation to the bottom-smacking incident but that the Claimant had appeared to laugh it off at the time and the individual concerned didn't have anything to do with whether she had been made redundant.

Again, this highlights the importance of complaining about incidents at the time they occur.

The difficulty with all these cases if the women concerned 'know' that they are being discriminated against, but are unable to prove it. Such knowledge may well be accurate, but that is a far cry from being able to prove it. It some ways things are harder than they were - a lot of discriminatory treatment is less overt and employers can simply get cleverer at covering up their behaviour and establishing lawful grounds for a dismissal. Only a very small number of sex discrimination claims are successful in court, but it is highly unlikely that this reflects in any way the actual incidents of sex discrimination in employment.

Am contemplating running courses for women in how to protect themselves at work and in law...