Six women file sex bias claim against Wal-Mart

Six women employees are taking the Wal-Mart supermarket chain to court, claiming widespread sexual discrimination in pay and promotions.

The lawsuit, lodged this week in San Francisco, seeks recognition as a class-action suit to represent an estimated 700,000 present and former employees of the company ­ which would make it the biggest sexual discrimination brought against a private employer in the United States.

Wal-Mart, whose headquarters are in Arkansas, boasts more than 3,000 supermarkets across America and is the country's largest private employer. More than two-thirds of its staff are women, yet only one-third are managers. The lawsuit claims that the company has in effect created two parallel workforces: one predominantly male, managerial and higher paid, the other mainly female and low-paid.

The women say they were denied the chance to advance in the company because they were not informed of openings and not offered training that would have qualified them for promotion, unlike their male counterparts.

A former employee said that she ­ like other women ­ was routinely assigned to "women's areas" (such as the baby-clothes department), and that their requests to be transferred to the DIY section were rejected.

The company has denied that it practises discrimination and promises to mount a "vigorous defence" in court. "We don't have policies and practices in place that promote discrimination of any kind," a spokesman said. He said women held 37 per cent of the 55,000 managerial positions, up to and including company vice-presidential level. It also denied channelling women to particular "dead-end" areas.

Among the claims made in the lawsuit is that the proportion of women in senior positions compares poorly with the proportion in comparable US chains. Wal-Mart says any comparisons could be misleading, because the definition of managerial responsibilities varies from company to company.

Strongly anti-trade union, Wal-Mart has a history of labour disputes including sexual harassment and discrimination suits in recent years.