In My Fair Lady, Henry Higgins put the question in a bouncing lyric: "Why can't a woman . . . ((ta-ta-ta-dum)) . . . be more like a man?" Last week the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in a major sex-discrimination case, Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins, that touches on some further questions that Professor Higgins never got to. Can a woman be too much like a man, at least in the eyes of some male colleagues? And if her career suffers because she strikes them as gruff and hard-nosed, is she being penalized for qualities that might be treated as assets in a male?
In 1978 Ann Hopkins was hired as a manager in the Washington office of Price Waterhouse, the giant nationwide accounting firm. Four years later, she was nominated for promotion to partnership, the only woman among 88 candidates that year. She looked like a winner. Despite the demands that go with being the mother of three children, she had helped bring in between $34 million and $44 million in business to the firm and had billed more hours in the preceding year than any other candidate.
But Hopkins, 44, also garnered some biting written evaluations from partners who branded her "macho," foulmouthed and harsh to co-workers. One said she needed to take a "course at charm school." Her candidacy was put on hold for a year. Afterward, a partner who was one of her biggest supporters advised her that she might improve her chances if she learned to walk, talk and dress "more femininely . . . wear makeup, have her hair styled and wear jewelry."
Eventually, Hopkins left the firm and brought suit, contending that the promotion process had violated Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits job discrimination. Pointing to the terms used to describe her in the written evaluations, she argued that she was a victim of sexual stereotyping by male partners who expected women to be sweet and conciliatory and who bridled at any departure from that image. "To be difficult to work with is somewhat in the eye of the beholder," she says. "We had difficult jobs to do."
Price Waterhouse countered that her evaluations merely described her on- the-job demeanor in terms like those applied to some male candidates whose manner had also prevented them from making partner. "Do the words used show sexual discrimination?" asks Kathryn Oberly, an attorney for Price Waterhouse. "Or do they just accurately describe her?"
The specific question before the Supreme Court is a technical one, but it may crucially affect the future of discrimination cases, especially those involving gender bias. In the past it has usually been up to the plaintiff to prove that an employer was guilty of discrimination. Two lower courts found that Hopkins had not proved conscious discrimination by Price Waterhouse. But they also found that the promotion system was so infected with biased notions about women that the burden of proof should be shifted to the firm to compel it to show that stereotypes played no role in the decision to reject Hopkins.