Last year, the EEOC said it would make “family responsibility discrimination” an enforcement priority in ’08. What is family responsibility discrimination? And why is it in the spotlight now?

First of all, there’s really no such thing as family-responsibility discrimination. But the term is used as a catch-all for bias claims filed under sex-discrimination laws, if gender plays some kind of role. What it usually means: A company is treating women with children differently than men with children.

Some specific behaviors the EEOC said it’s looking out for:

• Asking female job applicants about their family status, but not doing so with male applicants (you probably want to avoid those questions altogether)
• Giving women with children less-favorable assignments than male employees
• Treating women with children less favorably than childless women
• Being especially hard on men who take time off to care for children, and
• Denying men’s requests for family-related leave while approving similar requests made by women.

Trying to help

The EEOC has pointed out that supervisors can get tripped up even when they think they’re doing what’s best for the employee. Take this situation, for example:

A female salesperson gives birth to a child. When she comes to work, the sales manager starts giving her lower-priority clients because he’s concerned about how she’ll deal with the combined stress of raising a family and tackling difficult assignments – despite the fact that she didn’t ask for any additional time off or show any decline in performance after giving birth. Eventually, her lighter workload leads to her getting less of a pay raise or lower commissions than she might’ve gotten otherwise.

That employee would have a good chance of winning a lawsuit, if she can show that she was treated than male co-workers with kids. It’s important for managers to base those decisions on actual performance – and on the employee’s own requests – instead of on stereotypes or assumptions about what might happen.

New twists and turns

In one recent case, a woman with several young kids (including 6-year-old triplets) applied for a promotion with her current employer. During her interview, the decision-making manager asked if she thought she had “too much on her plate” to take on the new job. In the end, a female co-worker got the promotion instead.

The woman sued for sex discrimination. The company said her sex had nothing to do with the decision – after all, a woman got the job. But the judge said it didn’t matter. The key question was whether or not the company would have given the job to a “similarly situated” man (i.e., the father of six-year-old triplets). And the “too much on your plate” comment raised enough suspicion for the court to let the case go forward. (Cite: Chadwick v. Wellpoint, Inc.)

Best practices

Companies can stay safe by making sure managers are trained, and are aware of this new type of lawsuit. When you do harassment training, include examples of caregiver discrimination and show supervisors what to avoid.

Also, don’t be afraid of disciplining employees who miss too much work or aren’t performing well, even if the problem does have something to do with their responsibilities at home. Just make sure you enforce your policies in a consistent way, regardless the employee’s gender.

Read the full set of guidelines from the EEOC here.

Tags: EEOC, employees with children, family responsibility discrimination