Male and Female

When a worker falls ill or is injured, many large employers pay disability benefits without a murmur. The pregnant employee, however, generally gets no money for time taken as maternity leave. In a potentially far-reaching decision, Federal Judge Robert Merhige has found General Electric Co. guilty of sex discrimination in denying such benefits to pregnant workers. Ruling on a suit filed in 1972 by GE women, the judge dismissed the company's argument that pregnancy is incurred "voluntarily." Said he: "This standard is not applied in informal sports injuries, most of which could also be avoided by appropriate preparation and circumspect precaution."

The company plans to appeal the verdict; the final outcome is expected to influence similar suits. Moreover, collective bargaining agreements made by other companies in the past two years contain disability-pay clauses contingent on the outcome of the GE decision. If it should favor women, group insurance rates for employers nationwide would be increased considerably.

Of all employers, who is the stingiest and the most exploitative of women? Surprisingly, a strong candidate is the professional woman who hires a maid to care for her household while she is out building a career. So concluded Doris B. McLaughlin, a labor expert at the University of Michigan, who surveyed domestics working for 50 professional women in Ann Arbor and found that the employers were apt to deny their household help benefits they themselves take for granted. Less than 5% of the employers provide paid holidays and a scant 11% grant paid sick leave. Regular, automatic raises are given by only 17% of the employers and only 53% of the professional women paid into the social security fund.

Viewing the results, McLaughlin declared that the movement of one group of women up the economic ladder leads to the economic exploitation of another group. Says she of the professional women: "Probably their own freedom is so new that they do not yet think of themselves as employers--a role that until recently was thought to be almost exclusively reserved for men."

Few countries are as obsessed with machismo as Spain, where a married woman has virtually no property rights and cannot even open a checking account without her husband's permission.

In this climate of chauvinism, it is all the more unusual to find a successful bank devoted to, and run exclusively by women. Founded a year ago in Madrid, the Banco de la Mujer (the Woman's Bank) has already opened five provincial branches.

While it boasts as clients almost every female professional group in Spain, the bankers are especially eager to reach what Director Piedad Garcia de la Rasilla, 28, calls "the ordinary woman." In a male-run bank, says De la Rasilla, "she tends to be treated like a child showing offa collection of marbles." To better educate women about finance, the bank supplements its regular services with counseling on conjugal property laws and investing in stocks.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.