Dothard V. Rawlinson Case Analysis

Sexual harassment has always been, and still is, an extremely controversial topic. Some people tend to think that sexual harassment cases are all stemmed from lies made up by victims to gain attention or sympathy. Others, however, see sexual harassment as a serious crime that has been locked away in a vault and ignored by society. Whichever side one takes, the fact that sexual harassment and sexual discrimination laws play an important part in many aspects of society still stands. From the beginning of time, humans have struggled in deciding what rights certain groups should or should not have, and, slowly, everyone started to be set upon the same plane. Women are one of the most recent groups to be considered for this plane, and the journey …show more content…
The case of Dothard v. Rawlinson deals with the section of Title VII that focuses on discrimination in the workplace on the basis of sex. In this case, Rawlinson is denied a job as a prison guard based on a 120lb. weight requirement. The tricky part about this case, is that Title VII was not affected directly, in that there was no rule in place that specifically kept women from being prison guards, but an underlying air of discrimination still existed due to the parameters being out of the ordinary for a woman to meet. The court eventually ruled that these requirements were set without any evidence to warrant them. This is where the line between “protection” and discrimination began to blur together. The court decided to allow women to gauge their own abilities and do away with the old-fashioned belief that women should be kept from certain jobs for their own safety while men were not given the same treatment. However, there is a certain type of protection that everyone needs based on sex, and that is protection against sexual …show more content…
Gender roles heavily influenced everyone’s treatment of each other in that women were expected to have children and care for them while the men worked day and night to provide for the family unit. This led to there being very low expectations for women, and it began to become accepted that women were simply not smart or capable enough to work the jobs that men did. This way of thinking permeated society so intensely that women even discouraged other women from stepping outside of the cultural box, and many simply accepted things for what they were. It is surprising that so many women just accepted their role in society without question, and even went out of their way to prevent others from changing the course of society. Before watching the film, I felt that I possessed a fair amount of understanding on what it would’ve been like to live as a woman at that time, but after viewing it, I realize that it was much worse than I had ever thought. I was extremely shocked to discover just how different my life could have been if I was born only a few decades sooner. It allowed me to think about how far we’ve come, and how far we have yet to