Gender Discrimination

Unit 7 Case Analysis
Stefan W. Cooper
Kaplan University

This particular discusses the gender discrimination and the Bona Fide Occupational Qualification. The detention center has started a new policy that required each unit of the facility to be staffed by at least one officer of the same gender. This allowed the reducing of sexual abuse of juveniles by officers of the other gender. This has allowed the male officers to have more shifts and less shifts for the female officers. There were two female officers who sued on the basis of gender discrimination. We will examine and define gender discrimination in this case. Then we will discuss the elements of Bona Fide Occupational Qualification pertaining to this case. Gender discrimination is defined as employers are forbidden from discriminating against employees on the basis of gender and classifying jobs as male and female and advertising as such (Miller & Jentz, pg. 481, 2010). This means that whether it’s male or female the job should be the same for both genders and shouldn’t be on gender when applying for the job. This means that a female mechanic and male mechanic apply for same position and they both have the same experience. The male shouldn’t get the job over the female and it should be equal based on skill set and not on gender. The Bona Fide Occupational Qualification is defined as identifiable characteristics reasonably necessary to the normal operation of a particular business and these characteristics include gender, national origin and religion, but not race (Miller & Jentz, Pg g-3, 2010). This means the job performance requires a person to perform the task better than other base on gender or nationality. To give an example, look at a football player an average offensive line is 320lbs and a woman who weighs 125lbs wants to be an offensive lineman. The requirement of the job is to protect the quarterback and they accomplish by their sheer size. It wouldn’t be expected that a woman would be able to accomplish this on a normal scale.
The evidence that the detention center has is that this facility has more males in jail versus females. They want to protect the females and as well as the convicts from sexual abuse in the facilities. They need more male officers to accomplish this task versus female officers. The other defense would be that you wouldn’t want a male officer to watch females all alone in prison. They have a legitimate excuse in the process and claims.

References
Miller, R. L., & Jentz, G. A. (2010). The Legal and Constitutional Environment of Business. Fundamentals of business law: summarized cases (8th ed., p. 16). Mason, Ohio: South-Western/Cengage Learning.

References: Miller, R. L., & Jentz, G. A. (2010). The Legal and Constitutional Environment of Business. Fundamentals of business law: summarized cases (8th ed., p. 16). Mason, Ohio: South-Western/Cengage Learning.