D. Sex Discrimination

The body of sex discrimination law has many facets. To avoid exposure to charges of sex discrimination, the law requires equal pay for equal work and equal treatment, policies, standards and practices for males and females in all phases of the employment relationship. This includes hiring, placement, job promotion, working conditions, wages and benefits, layoffs and discharge. For example, it is generally discriminatory to:

• Refuse to hire women with preschool-age children while hiring men with such children;
• Require females to resign from jobs upon marriage when there is no similar requirement for males;
• Include spouses of male employees in benefit plans while denying the same benefits to spouses of female employees;
• Restrict certain jobs to men without offering women a reasonable opportunity to demonstrate their ability to perform the same job adequately;
• Refuse to hire, train, assign or promote pregnant or married women, or women of child-bearing age, merely on the basis of sex;
• Deny unemployment benefits, seniority, or layoff credit to pregnant women, or deny granting a leave of absence for pregnancy if similar leaves of absence are granted for illness;
• Institute compulsory retirement plans with lower retirement ages for women than for men.