by Race in the Workplace special correspondent Erica Mauter

Revenge of the fembots: happy to be child-free - Boston.com’s The Job Blog
“Unfortunately there are too many bad inferences in this piece including the fact that ‘unmarried’ is a mental illness; and that men who don’t marry are simply ‘bachelors,’ but women who don’t marry are either spinsters or fembots? Neither one is flattering.”

The Great American Makeover: The Sexing Up and Dumbing Down of Women’s Work After Jespersen v. Harrah’s Operating Company by Dianne Avery - Social Science Research Network
From the abstract: “Jespersen held that Harrah’s policy of requiring all female bartenders to wear certain makeup on the job was not discriminatory on its face because there was no evidence that the policy was based on ’sex stereotypes.’ In addition, the court ruled that, in the absence of evidence of the costs in time and money of buying and applying makeup, a mandatory makeup policy for women does not discriminate on the basis of sex by placing an ‘unequal burden’ on female workers. The vision of gender equality underlying the court’s analysis in the case reinforces the cultural devaluation of female workers’ competence and intelligence by allowing employers to enforce gendered appearance norms. The article examines how the court’s ’sex stereotyping’ and ‘unequal burdens’ doctrines have strayed from the statutory language of federal antidiscrimination law, as well as relevant Supreme Court interpretation of that language.” (via Workplace Prof Blog)

The top 5 reasons why most team building events are a waste of time - Chief Happiness Officer
“[C]ompanies today want their employees to cooperate more, to work well in teams, to share knowledge and to work to achieve success together. That is why it makes absolutely no sense to send them on trainings that are mainly competitive in nature. Even when these events let people work together in smaller teams, competing against other teams, the focus still ends up being on competition, not cooperation.”

Consultant Seeks Advice - Passion, People and Principles
David Maister received the following in an email: “Last week I spent a couple of days with group within my client’s organization. The group was all male with one female. I was appalled by the pre-pubescent behavior of the males towards the female. I’m a former Marine, played football in college, I’m not unfamiliar with male environments. Their behavior towards their own female staff made me uncomfortable. My test is that I don’t want to put our employees in an environment in which I would be uncomfortable putting my wife or daughter. But, it’s a really big client. And, my desire to back away from this client is being challenged by others.” His readers respond in the comments.

Has Kettle had its chips? - Guardian Unlimited
“Kettle Foods have been left with a bad taste in their mouth. They recently brought in a subsidiary of US union busters, the Burke Group, to advise them on how to stop the Unite union organising workers at their Norwich factory. They eventually won the battle - and workers voted 206 to 93 - to keep Unite out of negotiating for the workers. But, while this was going on, something totally unexpected happened. Two people - one a Guardian reader - set up separate groups on Facebook - Boycott Kettle Crisps for attacks on workers and Boycott Kettle Chips: the Anti-Trade Union Snack. Now, even after keeping trade unions out, the two groups continue to attract support and nearly 1,000 people in the UK, the US and Australia have pledged to refuse to buy another packet. The company are in danger of losing the war - they are even paying an expensive parliamentary lobbying and public relations company, Hill & Knowlton, to try to oppose the Facebook campaign.” (via Workplace Prof Blog)

Women face workplace weight discrimination - Michigan State University Newsroom
“Women are 16 times more likely than men to report weight discrimination in the workplace… According to the study, weight discrimination is the most common form of workplace bias among very obese white women (more so than discrimination based on age, sex, race or ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion or disability)… [Researcher Mark] Roehling said previous research has shown that overweight black women are evaluated less harshly than overweight white women and that blacks are ‘more accepting of large body types.’ ‘A large black woman is likely to think of herself as a black woman before she thinks of herself as a large person,’ Roehling said.”

Equality laws working against young women - icWales
It happens in the UK, too. “As a direct result of the rules governing maternity leave, directors in Wales, and their counterparts in the North East are least likely to hire women of child-bearing age than any of their counterparts in the UK – citing the legal risk of being caught out by constant changes in rules in this area as the main reason for their discrimination.”

Recommended Reading is a weekly feature where we link to some of our favorite workplace-related blog posts and articles. If you would like to suggest a link to Erica, please email tips@raceintheworkplace.com