For the first time in history, women are half of all U.S. workers, and mothers are the primary or co-breadwinners in nearly two-thirds of American families. The recent economic downturn accelerated this trend: Men lost three-quarters of the jobs shed from December 2007 to October 2009. Consequently, gender discrimination has become not just a women’s issue, but a family issue that has taken center stage in the country’s legal and political arena.
Developments in this area are increasingly affecting American employers and their corporate law departments as evidenced by the growing popularity of multimillion-dollar gender-discrimination lawsuits filed against some of the world’s largest corporations. Some of these suits have had devastating results for employers, including a 2010 $250 million jury verdict against Novartis AG, a company that was previously voted by Working Mother magazine as one of America’s top 100 places for women to work.
