#iowa supreme court
Because in December 2013 the all-male Iowa Supreme Court ruled that it was legal for a woman to be fired for…. wait for it…beingtoo attractive.
Melissa Nelson spent ten years working for dentist James Knight, a man twenty years older than she, and was considered a excellent employee. But her boss found her too attractive and was worried he would try to start an affair, despite the fact that Nelson had never engaged in flirtatious or other inappropritate behaviour. But Knight and his wife believed that his attraction to Nelson had become a threat to their marriage and therefore Knight decided to fire her and replace her with another woman.
Melissa Nelson then sued her former boss for sex discrimination, but the court dismissed her case and ruled that it did not count as sex discrimination as her boss hadn’t fired her because of her sex, but because of feelings.
So essentially, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled that men are animals who can’t control their sexual urges. They ruled that Iowa men can’t be responsible for their sexual desires. They ruled that Iowa women have to monitor and control their bosses. They ruled that the solution to feeling attracted to your employee is to fire that employee. They ruled that women can be fired for merely inciting attraction, sex, love, FEELINGS, whatever. They ruled that Melissa Nelson could be fired on the basis of being Melissa Nelson.
As a woman you’re constantly bombarded with messages about how to become more attractive and how to improve your appearance, but now you also need to watch out, because being “too attractive” might lose you your job! And if you live in Iowa, there’s nothing you can do about it, because it’s not about gender, it’s about FEELINGS.
Professor of sociology and author Dr. Pepper Schwartz commented on the case:
“Don’t tell me this has nothing to do with gender. I don’t see women firing men because they can’t control themselves. Is this because they don’t have manly kind of urges? Or is it because they don’t have access to the same excuses, such as uncontrollable attraction and desire? Either way, it’s a gender issue. And if a woman is denied employment because of her gender, that is a protected legal status.”
Will being able to fire a woman because of her looks become a tool to keep women out of the workplace?
