Selling Women Short: The Landmark Battle for Workers' Rights at Wal-Mart [Paperback]

Liza Featherstone (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 6, 2005

On television, Wal-Mart employees are smiling women delighted with their jobs. But reality is another story. In 2000, Betty Dukes, a fifty-two-year-old black woman in Pittsburg, California, became the lead plaintiff in Dukes v. Wal-Mart Stores, a class action, representing 1.6 million women. In her explosive investigation of this historic lawsuit, journalist Liza Featherstone reveals how Wal-Mart, a self-styled "family-oriented," Christian company: Deprives women (but not men) of the training they need to advance. Relegates women to lower-paying jobs like selling baby clothes, reserving the more lucrative positions for men. Inflicts punitive demotions on employees who object to discrimination. Exploits Asian women in its sweatshops in Saipan, a U.S. commonwealth. Featherstone goes on to reveal the creative solutions that Wal-Mart workers around the country have found, like fighting for unions, living-wage ordinances, and childcare options. Selling Women Short combines the personal stories of these employees with superb investigative journalism to show why women who work these low-wage jobs are getting a raw deal, and what they are doing about it. A new preface to the paperback edition will reflect on Wal-Mart's response to this lawsuit and its critics-including this one.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Fortune magazine's "Most Admired Company" for two years running, Wal-Mart offers its customers low prices and its shareholders big profits, but as freelance journalist Featherstone (Students Against Sweatshops) argues, this comes at great cost. Wal-Mart's success is based not only on its inexpensive merchandise or its popularity (Featherstone cites working-class shoppers and Paris Hilton among Wal-Mart's fans) but on bad labor practices. Using a close investigation of the class action suit Dukes v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. and extensive interviews with female workers, Featherstone indicts Wal-Mart for low wages, discriminatory policies and sexist practices. "[Our] district manager sometimes held lunch meetings at Hooters restaurants," one female employee explains; another recalls being asked to work "off the clock." Failure to post open positions, exclusively male social gatherings, pay discrimination, "persistent segregation of departments"—all are part, she argues, of Wal-Mart's deep-rooted culture of sexism. Many women employed full-time at Wal-Mart make so little that they are dependent on public assistance: "It is curious that Wal-Mart—the icon of American free enterprise and self-sufficiency...—turns out to be one of the biggest 'welfare queens' of our time," Featherstone writes. She doesn't give much time to related topics—racism, exploited overseas labor—but this is a clearly written and compelling book. It may not keep readers from their local Supercenters, but it should make them take a closer look at who's working the register.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Between 2000 and 2003, women workers at Wal-Mart stores across the country filed a class-action suit against the company for sex discrimination in promotions, pay, and job assignments. Dukes v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. is potentially the largest class-action suit in history, representing 1.6 million past and present women employees. The bare statistics reveal that Wal-Mart is sorely behind the rest of the country in promoting women, but the suit must also show that discrimination occurred in individual cases. Featherstone's interviews with the plaintiffs reveal an entrenched good ol' boy network at the company, where highly qualified women are routinely passed over for promotions that are given to men with less experience. Even more blatant are the pay inequities that harken back to 1950s attitudes about the male being the head of the household. These are heartbreaking stories of loyal employees who remained fervent believers in Wal-Mart despite being ridiculed for wanting to succeed. Caught up in the cultlike corporate culture, they bought into the Wal-Mart propaganda about rural family values while the company feeds off the poorest, fails to provide a living wage, and fights unionization tooth and nail. Wal-Mart, whose unfair labor practices are lowering the bar for all workers, is already responding to high-profile press coverage. Featherstone's chronicling of the personal side of the story should draw even more attention to these crucial issues. David Siegfried
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books (September 6, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465023169
• ISBN-13: 978-0465023165
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #164,195 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #18 in Books > Law > Constitutional Law > Discrimination

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Selling Women Short, December 7, 2004

By 

Ken Nash - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Selling Women Short: The Landmark Battle for Worker's Rights at Wal-Mart (Hardcover)

Betty Dukes is the lead plaintiff in a recent class action lawsuit charging Wal-Mart, the nation's biggest employer, with sex discrimination in pay and promotions.The giant retailer recognized the energy and dedication of the 52-year-old African American clerk - until she applied for promotion to management and crashed into a glass ceiling. When she complained, she was demoted. More than 100 women working at Wal-Mart joined Ms. Dukes in the suit, which charged that advancement at Wal-Mart is controlled by an "old boys" network. They came forward to talk about how they gave their all for Wal-Mart only to see men who were their juniors and had contributed less racing up the management hierarchy.

The case is the largest class-action suit in history, covering 1.6 million past and present women employees.Liza Featherstone tells their story in "Selling Women Short: The Landmark Battle for Workers Rights at Wal-Mart." Wal-Mart projects an image of a family-friendly company whose workers are valued "associates." But Wal-Mart managers often justify paying men more because they must provide for a family and women less because their family responsibilities might interfere with managerial duties. Women make up more than two-thirds of Wal-Mart's workers, but only 1/3 of its managers. The firm's deep-rooted sexist culture includes meetings at Hooters restaurants, exclusively male social gatherings and persistent segregation of entire departments.

Featherstone points out that even if all the discrimination ended, most Wal-Mart workers would still live in poverty with many needing food stamps and Medicaid to survive. Wal-Mart is a poster boy for labor law violations such as abusing undocumented workers, locking employees in at night, denying overtime pay and buying goods from overseas sweatshops. Because Wal-Mart is such a giant, it depresses pay and benefits for most retail workers in the U.S.

Unions have yet to succeed in organizing Wal-Mart workers, whose blind loyalty may result from intimidation. Because of Wal-Mart's huge size and effect on other workers, some unions have recently proposed that the entire labor movement pool resources for an all-out organizing drive. So Liza Featherstone's new book is not just a necessary primer on one company's excesses, it is a must-read for anyone interested in the future of the labor movement.

- Ken Nash

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Timely, necessary, and flawlessly reported, November 14, 2004

By 

Solly K. Minkton - See all my reviews

This review is from: Selling Women Short: The Landmark Battle for Worker's Rights at Wal-Mart (Hardcover)

(As for the punctuation, just click on the book cover! It's Amazon's error, not Ms. Featherstone's or the publisher's.)

If you have any doubts about who's right in the big Wal-Mart class-action lawsuit, look no further than this book by Liza Featherstone, a longtime labor reporter. Her interviews with women who work for the retail giant will tell you all you need to know about who's working harder -- the mothers and wives and daughters struggling to get by on shockingly low wages, or the management of the company trying as hard as it can to keep them from getting promoted or even paid equally. Betty Dukes, the African American lead plaintiff in the case, deserves a place in the American hero pantheon.

Read "Selling Women Short" and see America as it is, not as politicians want you to imagine it. Ms. Featherstone's poignant, hard-hitting, and often hilarious narrative will be an essential companion as this historic case continues to change the face of labor as we know it.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wal-Mart Women against the Wal-Mart Behemoth--a must read, November 30, 2004

By 

Builder Levy (New York City) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Selling Women Short: The Landmark Battle for Worker's Rights at Wal-Mart (Hardcover)

Best non-fiction read of the year, Selling Women Short is neither boring nor pedantic. It is packed with hard hitting realism dealing with the lives and stories of real hardworking women in their quest to survive and rise within Wal-Mart's anti-woman, anti-union corporate behemoth. This fascinating true story reveals how the Wal-Mart culture destructively works against poor working women while "serving" their poor workingclass communities. Against daunting and seemingly hopeless odds, most of the women Featherstone has written about have not given up. Their perseverance is inspiring. Lisa Featherstone's must-read book is inspiring.

Builder Levy, NYC