Thursday, December 04, 2014

Discrimination in the Locker Room

One of the most fascinating topics that we focused more recently in class involved discrimination. Not only did it include discrimination involving different races and sexes but it also included how a business person may have changed prices to affect their net profit from a certain group and other such examples. Nowadays there seems to be much less discrimination due to the fact that labor laws have changed how we approach situations like that. Although we have put in place some decent laws regarding the extermination of discrimination in the workplace, we can still find things that push the boundaries on what companies can do with regards to hiring people.
I would say that at my first job there may have been an instance where there was discrimination against any sort of women trying to apply for the job I was doing. Around 2007, I started a job with the Colorado Springs Sky Sox, a triple-A affiliate of the Colorado Rockies MLB team. I was a bat boy about half the time and the other half I spent helping players with any needs they may have wanted help with. I noticed there wasn't a single female working in the clubhouse. A couple years later when I helped my boss interview new workers for the same position I was in, I noticed one girl had applied for the position. When we called her up to be interviewed my boss shook her hand and flat out told her that girls were not allowed to work in the clubhouse. Since she had applied to many other positions in the stadium she just said it was okay and moved on. Immediately I wondered why this was the case. My boss' answer was basically that sometimes the baseball players are naked walking around after showers and stuff (after working 7 years there I can safely say they clearly like to be stripped down). Although it seems reasonable to say a woman should not have to see naked men running around, it still seems like that is not an adequate reason as to why she wouldn't be allowed to work there. Nothing in the job description says there are rules against it and it clearly to me would violate the liberty of that woman to want to work there and by us turning her down due to her gender would be discrimination. As i said before it is reasonable to want to keep that female from being harmed by naked ball players, it still does not justify why that should keep her from the job. I certainly did not want to see that stuff everyday but I was hired no problem because I was a guy. There should be no difference in this case considering there are no boundaries to the position. When you see female trainers on teams on different ball clubs or any sort of professional sport, they cannot justify why women cannot also be a player assistant or bat boy. This, to me, clearly violates the liberty of that individual and is a strong signal that the hiring process involves discrimination.

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