Wal-Mart announced last Wednesday its plans to source a total of $20 billion dollars worth of products from women-owned businesses in the United States over the next five years. This initiative would nearly double its current spending levels on women-owned business from $2.5 billion to approximately $4 billion annually.<\/p>\n
This \u2018woman-friendly\u2019 initiative comes just months after the Supreme Court\u2019s June 2011 ruling<\/a><\/span><\/span> in the nearly decade-long battle for class certification for nearly 1.5 million women currently and formerly employed by Wal-Mart. The women sought class-certification for claims that Wal-Mart\u2019s corporate culture led to company-wide bias and discriminatory decisions over pay and advancement opportunities for female employees. However, in an opinion by Justice Scalia the Court decided 5-4 to reverse the 9th<\/sup> Circuit\u2019s decision to grant certification, stating inter alia<\/em> that the class lacked common questions of law or fact.<\/p>\n Lyle Denniston of the SCOTUS blog argues<\/a><\/span><\/span> that this decision has two major implications: first, for the women bringing and affected by the suit. All the women wishing to recover must now bring individual suits against Wal-Mart, a highly improbable option given the low expected recovery in each case on its own. Second, Wal-Mart v. Dukes<\/em> will make it substantially more difficult for groups of workers to band together against large, powerful employers: \u201cthe bigger the company, the more varied and decentralized its job practices, the less likely it will have to face a class-action claim,\u201d Denniston writes.<\/p>\n The ripple effects of the decision were felt just one month later when a federal judge in California cited Wal-Mart v. Dukes<\/em> is its decision to decertify a class in an action brought by Dollar Tree store workers against their employer. In the wake of the decision Wal-Mart has faced protests and renewed vows of support for the women employees by workers\u2019, women\u2019s and religious organizations.<\/p>\n While Wal-Mart maintains that the new women-friendly initiatives have no relation to the Dukes<\/em> case, the announcement is suspiciously reminiscent of the company\u2019s 2005 Sustainability Program that was adopted following massive assaults on its labor practices and environmental record.<\/p>\n Wal-Mart is acutely aware of the affect organizations like the women\u2019s and labor groups have on public opinion. In 2009 The New York Times<\/a><\/span><\/span> reported on a confidential memo prepared for the company around the time of their adoption of the Sustainability Program, five years prior, by McKinsey & Company. The report found that two to eight percent of Wal-Mart consumers surveyed had stopped shopping at the chain because of negative press. Wal-Mart executives and Wall Street analysts, The Times reports, began referring to the problem as \u201cheadline risk.\u201d Incidentally, more than half of Wal-Mart\u2019s 200 million customers are female, creating a great potential loss to \u201cheadline risk\u201d associated with this summer\u2019s ruling.<\/p>\n Motives aside, steps taken by Wal-Mart as the nation\u2019s largest company can result in major change. Their massive size and thus massive influence over the industry was put to use earlier this year when the company teamed up with First Lady<\/a><\/span><\/span> Michelle Obama, pledging to reduce sodium and sugar and eliminate trans fats in its packaged food products. Given its market share, this feat was easily implemented by the massive chain. Humanitarian group CARE USA, which began working with Wal-Mart in 2009 on a project with Bangladeshi and Indian workers, notes that such collaborations are appealing specifically because of Wal-Mart\u2019s role as an industry leader. Their actions not only have their own enormous impact, but the potential to \u201cshape what others do in the field.\u201d<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n While the initiative presents potential for positive change, it also diverts attention from the issues presented by the plaintiffs of Dukes<\/em>, who are now in a more vulnerable position than when they filed their suit ten years ago. Janet Shenk, former AFL-CIO official now with the Panta Rhea Foundation, points out that \u201c[i]t\u2019s not about who owns the factory\u2026there\u2019s no evidence that factories and businesses owned by women treat their employees better or have better concern than factories and businesses owned by men.\u201d Additional vows to support the training of women in factories and farms that serve as Wal-Mart\u2019s suppliers, to donate $100 million to causes supporting women\u2019s economic development and to ask vendors and services to increase gender and minority representation on their Wal-Mart accounts redirect focus from Wal-Mart\u2019s own domain of regulation of labor conditions to those of suppliers, charities, and vendors.<\/p>\n In other words, Wal-Mart\u2019s \u201cwomen-friendly\u201d initiative does nothing to address the concerns presented by Dukes and the other 1.5 million \u201cwomen of Wal-Mart.\u201d The issue presented in Dukes<\/em> did not involve the number of women entrepreneurs profiting off business relationships with Wal-Mart or the misdeeds of suppliers, but rather concerned the manner in which the company\u2019s own<\/em> employees were compensated and respected as valued members of the corporation. While this strategy indicates that Wal-Mart certainly anticipated the \u201cheadline risk\u201d associated with Dukes, <\/em>this tried and true public relations tactic cannot erase decades of corporate-wide discriminatory practices toward women.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Wal-Mart announced last Wednesday its plans to source a total of $20 billion dollars worth of products from women-owned businesses in the United States over the next five years. This \u2018woman-friendly\u2019 initiative comes just months after the Supreme Court\u2019s June 2011 ruling in the nearly decade-long battle for class certification for nearly 1.5 million women currently and formerly employed by Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart\u2019s \u201cwomen-friendly\u201d initiative does nothing to address the concerns presented by the \u201cwomen of Wal-Mart.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":3340,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center 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