North Star Writers Group

I find some positive aspects to the company. Not being fashion-forward at all, I don’t mind buying clothes at Wal-Mart because they are cheap – and very often not any worse in quality than apparel costing two or three times as much at department stores. I also admire Wal-Mart’s long-standing environmental consciousness. Its goal of selling one million compact fluorescent light bulbs a year by 2008 is highly laudable, as is its decision to price many generic drugs at $4.00 per 30-day prescription. I benefit from that policy every month.

Then there are the things I don’t like about Wal-Mart, such as its relentless anti-union stance and its tendency to hire part-time hourly employees to avoid paying for health insurance, forcing many of its workers to rely on public assistance to pay medical bills. The company’s shift to scheduling that matches staff levels with store traffic has some employees reporting a loss in work hours, which Wal-Mart denies is happening.

(Full disclosure: I have minor financial ties to a company competing with Wal-Mart in selling groceries in the Dallas/Fort Worth market.)

Thanks to a recent ruling by the 9^th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the retailing behemoth is now vulnerable to billions of dollars in damages in the nation’s largest class-action discrimination lawsuit. By a 2-1 vote, federal appeals judges have allowed to go to trial a case that involves as many as 1.5 million current and former female employees. These women allege that Wal-Mart discriminated against them in pay and promotions because of their gender. Wal-Mart plans to ask the court to reconsider its finding.

Although Wal-Mart is innocent until proven guilty in court, I would not be surprised if ultimately, after much obfuscation and delaying tactics, the verdict goes against the company. In my two decades of shopping at Wal-Marts and Sam’s Club warehouse stores, they always seemed to me to be top-heavy with men as managers and executives, while women invariably fill low-rank jobs like cashier. In fact, I have yet to run across a male cashier at any Wal-Mart store, although I do recall a couple at the Sam’s Club nearest my home.

Why do I continue to patronize Wal-Mart/Sam’s Club? If I started boycotting businesses that discriminate against women, I would not have many shopping options. Even if it cannot be demonstrated in a court of law, discrimination against women is still widespread throughout the U.S. workplace. About the only business in which a woman can be cut a break is a company she owns and operates. Perhaps that’s why women are the nation’s top entrepreneurs, forming new companies at twice the national growth rate for all such new business ventures, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

And at the risk of paying more at the cash register, I hope Wal-Mart loses the case. That could be merely sour grapes. I still have vivid memories of being paid less than male colleagues with less experience to perform far better at precisely the same job. Women employed full-time still earn only 81 percent of their male counterparts’ weekly median wages, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics finds. That number was 73 percent when I started my career.

A huge verdict against Wal-Mart might shake up the rest of corporate America. Wal-Mart is the world’s biggest retailer, number two on the Fortune 500 list of largest U.S. publicly held companies. If Wal-Mart gets nailed for discriminating against women, maybe other businesses will sit up and take notice. Maybe. It all depends on how much money eventually is involved, of course.

For all the corporate hot air about “diversity” and “inclusiveness” in employment, the U.S. workplace remains more inviting to and rewarding for men than women. Unless and until we resolve our national ambivalence about women’s success, whether in politics, the professions, the sciences, management or as business owners, not much will change.

Such resolution, however, would involve re-examining the entire way we regard women as human beings and their presumed “place” in the world. This type of introspection has never been high on our national priority list. Most Americans would probably prefer to have a root canal or pay income taxes than honestly examine their expectations of women, or of themselves. We pay a high price, economically and spiritually, for our continued ignorance of self.

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This is Column #CT23. Request permission to publish here.