Chapter 7: Case study_WAL-MART’S WOMENWal-Mart Stores, Inc., or the “Always Low Prices” company is the world’s biggestretailer, owns more than 8,400 stores in 15 countries, and has over 2,100,000 employeesworldwide. Wal-Mart is “famous for its strong and distinctive corporate culture, which itactively promotes”. Managers and employees have to join to mandatory weekly training oncompany culture. “Managers are evaluated on their knowledge of the culture and employeesare rewarded when they demonstrate a strong commitment to it”. Although Wal-Mart is awell-known company due to their size, revenue, and the numbers of people they employ, thecompany violated a lot of laws. Their labor practices involved issues that are unethical. Forexample, Wal-Mart used child-labor and illegal immigrants, did not pay overtime wages andprovide meal breaks to its workers, and discriminated against female d employees inpromotions, pay, management training, and job assignments. (Velasquez, 2012, p.392).Velasquez’s book, Business Ethics Concepts and Cases, includes the case study, Wal-Mart’s Women, sexual discrimination is the major issue which violated the ethics of jobdiscrimination. In the case, the suit was launched by six American women who worked in 13Wal-Mart stores. They charged that female employees were paid less than men in comparablepositions, despite having higher performance ratings and greater seniority, and received fewerand waited longer for promotions to in-store management positions than men. On behalf ofall 1.6 million female employees, the six women sued Wal-Mart to ask for back pay andcompensation for the time they worked at Wal-Mart. The women hired Richard Drogin— astatistical expert to analyze Wal-Mart’s sexual discrimination case from 1996 to 2002.Regarding Drogin’s reports, he pointed out several main factors that were related todiscrimination against Wal-Mart’s female employees. First, in both two main groups—hourly employees at the lower levels and salaried management employees at the higher level,women earned less than men. Second, the management training and promotion wereWAL-MART’S WOMEN CASE STUDYunequally distributed among the male and female employees even though men and womenwere equally qualified, ranked, and experienced. The reasons were that the company’scultural practices were male-oriented, salaried management positions were asked to relocategeographically, something that the managers thought women were not willing to do.Available promoted positions were informed by word of mouth to potential candidates whothe managers picked.The actions of Wal-Mart seriously discriminated based on gender by creating the gapamong male and female. Female employees were unequally and unfairly treated because theywere women, not because they did not have enough knowledge, abilities, or good workattitude. The company should have higher respect for female employees because they notonly took familial responsibilities, but also they did their tasks at work as well. Genderdiscrimination was an action to pull down the power of women and disregard their dedicationto both workplace and society. They were absolutely worthy of having justice and beingtreated equally. The six women in the law suit required the right and justice not only forthemselves, but also for 1.5 to 2 million women who worked at Wal-Mart for a long time, andwere suffered by the company’s policies.The question is what Wal-Mart needed to do next when this case filed. The companyunderstood how its finance and reputation would be affected if they did not settle with thesefemale employees’ rights. To defend themselves, the company tried to demonstrate that “payand promotion decisions were independently determined by individual managers at the storelevel and were not based on a uniform company policy”. Moreover, the company argued thatWal-Mart gave many equal opportunity programs all employees who are white or black,women or men. Also, the company posted antidiscrimination policy poster all over.Furthermore, the managers tried to “set goals that were realistic, achievable, made sense andweren’t worse than the year before”. The new program “allowed women to enter salariedWAL-MART’S WOMEN CASE STUDYmanagement jobs without having to relocated their homes”. (Velasquez, 2012, p.396). All inall, the company’s adjustments proved that Wal-Mart admitted the ways the company treatedfemale employees were wrong, so they needed to do something to “put the case behind” toimprove their “present situation”.To sum up, Wal-Mart’s Women case study exposes the overview of two matters. Thefirst matter is the discriminatory practices in the workplace, especially sexual discriminationfrom recruitment practices, screening practices, promotion practices, conditions ofemployment and discharge. Those lead to the violation of ethical issues— justice and equalityfor all people. The second matter is how important it is that company setups a suitable cultureand policies at all levels. Also the top leaders should change their minds about the valuationof women because not only they contribute to the workplace, but also they devote time totheir families and communities, therefore they should be more respected for their dedication.Nowadays, there are many cases show that women achieve in their careers and contribute tosociety. Women are not people who only play traditional roles in the families.