[captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2015] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> on the next washington journal, a reporter with the wall street journal on subprime lending and washington post reporter on the policy issues facing u.s. states. washington journal, like every day at 7:00 a.m. eastern on c-span. >> here are some of our featured programs for this weekend on the c-span networks. saturday morning starting at 10:00 a.m., live on c-span, our nation's governors get together to discuss issues. guests included danny meyer, and maria of fox business news. and sunday morning at 11:00

with continue our coverage on the national governor's association meeting and features speakers include jeh johnson and epa administrator. on c-span 2 saturday, book tv is on the road experiencing the literary life a greensboro north carolina, part of the c-span cities tour. on afterwords, retracing his career choices from combat veteran to white house fellow to wall street banker to social onto for nor. -- entrepreneur. in american history tv, saturday night, just after 7:00, a 1963 interview of malcolm x discussing race relations and opposition to racial integration. and sunday, former cia chief of the skies tells the story of a husband and wife kgb spy team that infiltrated the cia through

the use of sex in the 1970's. find our complete schedule at www.c-span.org and let us know what you think about the programs you are watching. call us at -- e-mail us at -- or send is a tweet at -- joined the c-span conversation, like us on facebook, follow us on twitter. >> keep track of the republican-led congress and follow its new members. new congress, best access on c-span, c-span 2, c-span radio and www.c-span.org. >> a look at loss on gender equality during the conference at boston university. marking the 50th anniversary of the 1964 civil rights act. gender stereotyping, equal pay, and sexual harassment laws and

this is one hour. >> my privilege this afternoon to introduce commissioner chai feldblum and also thank her for coming to the conference. not only coming for being here the whole time and participating actively, we can all agree she is substantially enhanced the conference for doing that. i think it reflects the fact that at heart she is still a law professor dale loves ideas. -- and that it loves ideas. we can admire her career as being successful in connecting the realm of ideas to the world something she has done pretty much since graduating from law school a couple years clerking

on the first circuit. at georgetown, she founded the law centers, a federal legislative clinic which she had a number of clients that led to her being instrumental in the drafting and negotiating the american with disabilities act. and the 2008 amendments to that act as well. these are both negotiated statute and not just the drafting. and she played a role in the drafting the nondiscrimination act, which has not yet been enacted. more connected to the topic of talking without wasting any more of her time. [applause]

>> it really has been a full and amazing day and a half conference. i did in fact tells my chief of staff i wanted to clear the day and a half and so i could be here. partly because i knew i would learn as i have. currently, as a law professor i do believe in the importance of theories. so, i definitely want to thank the law school for supporting this conference, for supporting linda, and all of her work as you heard. and also to thank the members of her committee kiara and jack. even if you are going to meetings are responding to e-mails, you are engaged helping to craft this event. finally, i have a true confession.

i am on closeted c-span junkie. there it is. every office i have had since 1991 i have required a tv in the office. i turn it to c-span and that is where it states the whole day. often on mute. a little disconcerting to some of my visitors sometimes. but on a serious note, as you will see from my comments, i want to talk about how we can achieve real social change. and an important aspect of real change is an engaged citizenry and an engaged citizenry needs to have unfiltered information that comes to them. c-span is absolutely an important component of that in our democracy. ok.

so the civil rights act of 1964. obviously, as you've heard and as you know, definitely a historic piece of legislation. it is as you heard yesterday as professor wilson and today from kiera bridges, it is not a fully transformational piece of legislation because it cannot buy is on get us to full racial equality, equality on a number of fronts because until you engage with the economic issues of this country, that won't happen. nevertheless, it also plays its part in people can actually get to jobs, people of color get jobs and get promoted in their jobs that will make a difference in their economic status. it is also, i think, a dynamic law particularly as implemented

by the eeoc, equal employment opportunity commission the commission on which i serve as one of five commissioners and the commission that congress specifically chose to set up as a bipartisan commission when they passed the civil rights act of 1964, they could've had the department of justice implement the law or department of labor area instead of they created it is bipartisan commission. and i think we have taken our job seriously in terms of being responsible for implementing the law. for example, in areas of race, i believe well done really important work in terms of a reinvigorating our guidance about requiring any criminal background screen to actually match up to the job, which is the screen is being used. you heard from kiera that the law would not protect her in terms of her cornrows and that's

what the courts have decided. just this year, the eeoc filed a claim alleging that a dress code that said professional appearance means no dreadlocks no cornrows is a form of race discrimination. not only because it might be a marker of race, but because for a non-african-american, we don't have to do anything to our hair to have it be straight. and for many african-americans their hair would normally lock. that is what it does. having a cold, a dress code that said you must use something unnatural to your hair in order to work here is a form of race discrimination. also done work in terms of english only, contesting english only, something that is often

done. the reaction from congress and in terms of religion, the issues have changed since 1964. not so much that they say no jews, no muslims but dress code. with been very active in that area. for this talk, i want to focus on gender equity. one can to do everything, i will focus on gender equity. and talk about advances that have been made over the past decade at how far we have to go. i do believe that anniversaries like the 50th anniversary of the civil rights act is a particularly useful moment in which to reflect on what has happened which has been positive and what else needs to be done. here's the framework i want to use in talking about this. a framework i started doing a number of years ago, but it

resonates for me now because many other the presentations and you've heard have actually used this framework. so, the framework is that to achieve any social justice goal and he social justice outcome wonder needs three variables. love, policy and practice, and social norm. what i mean by law is the law that passed, congress or state legislatures, local ordinances, the laws a legislature has passed. the way in which that a law has been applied in interpreting by an agency charged with implementing the law. regulations and guidance. and courts that have been applied that law, those regulations and guidance to particular cases.

in other words, lots of words. all part of law. policies in practice, i mean how and whether the words of the law , regulations, case decisions have actually been absorbed into this and use of an organization that is regulated by that. requirements of the law, truly reflected in the daily ordinary practices of their organization? or are they primarily words? by social norms, i mean what the majority of people feel and think about social justice outcome being pursued. until one gets to the tipping point of where more than a majority of the people significant a majority of the people believe in their hearts

and minds that the social justice outcome being pursued is actually a good social outcome. it will never be achieved. and these three elements of synergistic's, interrelated, always a dynamic dancing going on between them. for example, assume the social justice outcome of being sought is equity in the workplace. we often need a law in order to get employers to put policies in practice in their workplaces to stop the discrimination. both the signaling the social message of the law and the policies and practice might themselves change social norms. what workers believe in their hearts in my about how they should act.

as social norms change, that they may both the laws and policies work more effectively because suddenly employers are able to understand the law that are and comply with it more effectively and coworkers will begin to accept the social norms and view them as the appropriate norms to follow. you know, i was just a few days ago speaking at a keynote panel so we spoke right of after justice scalia. richard epstein was on the panel and i was making this point in terms of these variables and then his comments he said, you know, if you want to change a social norm, the worst thing to do is pass a law. i was like ok, that's not exactly what i said. what i said is if you want to achieve a social justice outcome , you need certain variables. social norms are one of those

variables but not the law will legislate social norms. often, you need some change to get at the law enacted as a political manner. law is one component of achieving that social norm and it can actually be an interactive synergistic component to helping their social norm be adapted. let's think about that framework in the context of the antidiscrimination provision based on sex that is included of the civil rights act of 1964. as many of you may know, the civil rights act did not include a sex discrimination prohibition only employment on the basis of race, color, national religion, and -- the myth had risen that congress had never dealt or even thought

about the issue of sex discrimination and was added to title vii on the house floor by a congressman who simply wanted to kill the bill. there are some elements of truth in this story but mostly is completely wrong. and serena alluded to yesterday. by the way, when i tried to track down the first time it came up, i found it, i think a paragraph in a harvard law review in a symposium where there was one paragraph that simply said this in reference the one woman member of congress, who was opposing it. any of you working in law seeing what you write, it doesn't matter. so, the reality is that congress had been having the debate about sex discrimination for over 40

years at that point. right now, it had not been in the context of the debate or in the context of an employment law that would govern private employers. it had been in the context of whether to ask and equal rights amendment. and the national women's party had been pushing since the 1920's. by the 1940's, the language of the proposed amendment read as follows, in of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the united states or by any state on account of sex. that amendment is adopted and what is meant there could be no federal law and no state law that denied or abridged equality of rights on account of sex. as you all know, and the e.r.a. was not passed until many years later and not ratified by the states. the reason for non-passage of the e.r.a. was that in 1950,

varies women's groups and unions prevails on congress to add a second sentence. the second sentence said "the provision of this article shall not be construed to impair any right, benefit, or exemption conferred by law upon persons of the female sex." the first part said no law may take sex into account in the second sentence said yes, laws can take sex into account is a confirmed or exemptions to women. what was going on here? a combination of practical politics and social norms. as a matter of social norm, the assumption was that women were really different than men because their true job was to be wives and mothers. not to be workers in the labor market.

as a practical political matter, unions and women's groups have successfully gotten labor laws enacted in a number of state a very importantly, upheld against constitutional challenges by having those laws protect only women on the grounds that women were different than men. for example, laws enacted that what a limit on the maximum number of hours that women could work or required premium overtime pay just for women because women were different from men and their real jobs were to be wives and mothers and these laws would help them do that. these groups did not want an e.r.a. that would invalidate the loss and a national women's party had no interest in the e.r.a. if it included the second sentence. 13 years later in 1960 three, title vii is introduced, no sex

discrimination provision. the national women's party sought it as an opportunity let's get a sex discrimination prohibition added. them and a congressman who opposed the civil rights, he was a congressman who had been introduced in the e.r.a. into the house for the past number of years. as a political matter, they assumed he might bring along votes of other members of congress like smith who oppose the bill and hope it would be the poison. but, at least a number of members voted to add sex because they felt it was the right thing to do. 11 out of the 12 then women members of congress, 11 out of the 12 voted to add the sex discrimination prohibition in area -- in.

serena yesterday and in her book does an excellent job of unpacking and building on the work of other scholars, the total racist rationale that was used. if you pass this without gender, it means white women will have less protection than black men and women and how horrible wouldn't that be? the reason is stated in was because of the work of explaining no, it was essential to keep gender in to help african-american women. here's the interesting thing. the words became part of the law. because social norms were not out of place, men and women were considered to be the same at least for employment policy purposes. the eoc chart with enforcing the law and subsequently found it

hard to accept title vii's prohibition on sex discrimination at face value. here is an example. september 1965, a few months after the eoc opened their doors , the commission announced his position that the sex segregated advertisement would not -- was not a violation of title vii. the general practice was to have male and female and the help wanted section of the papers area that was a thing called newspapers in print. there was a list of jobs under men wanted when -- women wanted. the eoc decided this practice did not violate title vii because the personal inclination of men and women was such a that many job categories were primarily of interest to only to men and women.

segregating advertisements was simply helping applicants find a job they were looking for anyway. now, eoc explain if a woman apply for a job under the men wanted column or a man under women only, the law prohibited an employer for not hiring a person based on sex. the ad themselves were fine. when the first articles i read that really -- one of the first articles i read there really laid it out was from kerry by texas and i remain indebted to her for that. i went back and read katherine frankie and mary in case'-- mary andne case's articles. it's so outraged women's organizations a found it -- they founded a reaction.

if you go to the website and go under history, they will explain. the eoc emerged as a leader of shaping sex discrimination. the -- how could the eoc do that? through commissioned decisions it did not have real strong enforcement of authority but it did have the requirement of taking charges and investigating and seeing if they thought there was reasonable cause. in the early years of the eoc, those decisions were all issued by the commission. they all came up to the commission, the back of the investigation and the commission issued decisions explaining why there was cause are not caused to believe discrimination occurred. all of these were confidential and the statutes could not be disclosed in the name of the charging party or respondent.

it was actually used by courts in figure out what title vii should mean. we use commission decisions and issued guidance to explain our review of the law and heard congress could not give us in title vii the authority to issue substantive, only procedural regulations. obviously, it was no prohibition and gathering the things we said in various decisions and putting that out and guidance, which is commission has been doing since that time. finally, once the eoc got litigation of authority, the oc pull forth its view of the law. for example, the eoc said toward a preposition such as if sector's coronation, if an employer want higher to marry mehran -- married women but will

hire married man, if an employer will not hire women with young children below school age but will hire me in with below school age children. these propositions might seem obvious now as they were very contested at the time. for example with regards to an employer's rule it were not hire women with children in a case that was one of the first taken to the supreme court wouldn't hire women with school children but man and the court ruled it cannot be sex discrimination. the panel said it could imagine that members of congress would be so irrational, so removed from common sense to believe there was no difference between me and with young children and women with young children. whatever it was, it was not sex

discrimination. now, the supreme court rules -- reverse that rolling. -- ruling. you also heard him panel, it might be a bona fide qualification not to have women with young children and left that to the courts to decide and act fully partly because legislation that was brought. not all commissioned decisions of sex discrimination were positive. in the 1970's, transgendered employees and gay employees brought charges to the commission. you have someone who had been living at a man and working as a man for 20 years and she transitions and is now a woman in gets fired. she thinks, it feels i sex discrimination to me. cost the commission and the commission said, whatever it is, is not sex discrimination. is based on an operation.

it is not sex discrimination. the same thing when a gay charging parties came. the eoc said that his sexual orientation discrimination not sex discrimination. it burns the myth that congress wasn't really thinking about this. -- brings the myth the eoc was once a rail leader in arguing that sex stereotyping , assumptions about how men or women would act on a job therefore by making me in a better for some jobs and women better for others. and how men and women should act in a job cannot be a legitimate basis for employment decisions. in 1989, 25 years after passage of title seven, the supreme court, acting on gender stereotyping is a form a sex discrimination. in that case, the court

concluded that if an employer acted only gender stereotype, that women should not be too macho or aggressive, that meant the employer was inappropriately taking sex into account. and as the supreme court said, "gender must be irrelevant to employment decision." gender must be irrelevant to employment decision. this may seem like a simple sentence. if you actually read all of the pages in one sitting like i did and read back, you realize how momentous a sentence it was. for two decades, the courts had been twisting themselves into pretzels not to accept this plane a meaning of the word, you can't take sex into account just like you can't take race into account.

where are we now? is it all over? has sex and gender become irrelevant in the workplace? not. newsflash. kind of mind blowing how much it is not over. so, i want to highlight a few areas where we are not where we should be an offer some ideas of moving forward. first, sexual harassment. the amount of sexual harassment that is still going on in our workplaces is truly horrific. it is something i did -- the understand until i became a commissioner at the eoc. in a lot of professional settings, settings in which we in our colleagues operate, yes, there are some sexual harassment. it is not at this almost horrific -- almost endemic

amount. i was just see case after case of sexual harassment. often in restaurants, retail stores where these were young women and their first job and there were subjected to the sexual harassment or women and nontraditional male-dominated jobs. immigrant and migrant workers. now, from my perspective, we need a creative multipronged campaign to stop this epidemic. law is a critical variable in the campaign absolutely, it can make employers take notice and put those processes in place. but the law on is on will never do this work. to eradicate sexual harassment, government must work in partnership with businesses and advocacy groups to develop a proactive and creative strategy

that will ultimately change the social norms. change what is truly experienced and believed and acted upon in the workplace. change it so that a man knows it is not ok to sexually harass a woman in the workplace. women know it is not ok. that happens too to sexually harass men. it has to be a multipronged, creative strategy. to accommodations to pregnant workers. early on, the commission concluded that if an employee discriminates against pregnancy that is a form of sex discrimination. another radical concept. the supreme court disagreed and in the dance that occurred congress disagreed with the supreme court and pass the pregnancy discrimination act.

it amended title vii to use a yes, sex includes argosy and a pregnant employee must be treated the same as other employees similar in their ability or inability to work. here is the reality today. there are pregnant workers across the country who need accommodations to stay on the job. we have tons of employers today who will give male or female employees who have been injured on the job, have a disability and accommodation of modified job duties. if they have a lifting restriction and might change the duties on a temporary basis. but those employers will not give the same accommodations to pregnant women despite the plain language. well, this past june as you heard, the oc issued a new guidance as requiring equal

accommodations in such situations. this approach we took is different from the five other circuit courts of appeals level rules on this. we as the agency, we would have to be dealing with that law, but as an agency, we have responsibility and authority to say what we think that the law requires and asked what we put out in our guidance. as you heard in the case of young versus ups, the supreme court will decide and i certainly hope that they agree with eoc and if they do, that would have an effect and practical policies on the ground. which will ultimately help primarily lower income women who are working in manual jobs. as an interesting twist on how litigation can itself affect policy, ups announced in its

brief that it had changed its policy and it was now going to accommodate pregnant women. they made it clear they were not required to do so under the law. they still wanted to say that were not liable before. but look at the effect to a company as a reputational matter to make a quick -- to make it known they are not discriminated. pay equity, a huge issue. some of the pay disparity comes from leighton discrimination. i have seen a bunch of these cases as of the eoc and we need to fight the that straight on. a lot of the disparities due to the significant segregation that exists in our workplaces. research shows that female

dominated occupations pay less than male-dominated occupations given the same skill. you might have the same skill needed for job mel dominated job -- male-dominated jobs will pay more. do you know how much gender segregation, job segregation still exist in this country? not so much in the professional fields, you don't see it. 40% of women in this country work in jobs that a female -- that are female dominated, more than 70% other people are women. more than 40% of men work in jobs that are male-dominated. 70% of the men and the occupation army in. well, wages are being skewed. from my perspective, changing the occupational segregation

requires an overall multipronged strategic plan. a fair amount on the job segregation is the result of choices that men and women make and deciding which jobs to take. so one has to use more than law to a dress it. law, absolutely a critical component. well brought cases where women are clearly not even hired. we have brought cases it is rampant sexual harassment. obviously, law is critical. it has to be more than that. it has to be in overall educational campaign and it needs to be, even things like the american job centers that gets millions of dollars from the federal government, they get the same credit, no matter what job they find for people. if they're moving women into retail jobs and men into welding jobs because that is actually easier, they get the same credit.

what about requiring they actually think can i give more skills training to these women and open up for them the idea that maybe they want to do this other job? these are a few of the issues we are working on now. i want to conclude with a discussion of a final issue that doesn't require a multipronged plan. that's what a discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity is sex discrimination and therefore currently prohibited by title vii. now, as you heard, i was one of the original drafters of the employment nondiscrimination act in 1993. students in the room might want to know it was written off as a law school exam because i'd been hired as a consultant to work and there was a meeting the next day and i knew, i do not know if they had developed paper but i

knew the best way to assess a meeting is to come in with paper. i had in my computer an example -- an exam for legislation class and had a bunch of mistakes. i went in and fix the mistakes and printed it out and that's what i brought. here's the thing. it is what i call a funny thing happened of nda. i often say i don't have kids. i have lost. lost -- laws have lots of peers and off the more than nine months. but in a way what happened with nda, we discover it was an older sibling that had been overlooked. not understood in terms of what is prohibited.

and so the first case in the development was the one you heard about saying you cannot act on the basis of gender stereotyping and justice scalia writing said, the 1964 congress -- i'm sorry. that's the gender stereotyping. the next case of about 10 years later dealing with same-sex sexual harassment, justice scalia writing for a unanimous court said yes, you can show it is because of sex and same-sex sexual harassment is covered. the 1964 congress was not thinking about that. so after, transgendered folks started bringing cases are doing gender stereotyping. some courts started to adopt a those. the six and 11 circuit and in

2012, the eoc issued an opinion in a case versus macy's versus the justice department where we held discrimination based on being -- we have authority in the federal sector is applicable to federal jobs or employees and this was a federal sector opinion. in one respect, we were catching up to the court, explaining hey it's a form of a gender stereotyping if you think someone who has been designated as mail at birth should not transmission at -- transition as a woman, that is gender stereotyping. which we thought was important was to go back to the underlying point, which was if an employer ask on a base of a gender stereotype, that's evidence that

gender has been taken into account. is not that gender stereotyping is free cause of action but evident that gender has been taken into account. if you can show directly that gender has been taken into account, that establishes the violation. we said may seem as the name of the complainant, she should call -- it can show that she did not get the job she applied to issue was a man and she said she shall does a woman and the job disappeared. nukes that it was because of a gender stereotype or gender had been taken into account. -- you could say it was because of a gender stereotype or gender had been taken into account. does this gender had been taken into account? the same has been happening with

regards to the coverage of sexual orientation discrimination under section seven. the eoc has been more of a leader very much like the early years when they eoc was setting forth the laws. because price, -- for -- a number courts started protecting gay men and lesbians who fit some stereotype of what it meant to be gay. if a man seem to effeminate and a wanted to masculine and epithets that indicated that that is what it was based on, those folks would be covered under gender stereotyping. if they could improve that and just because they were gay, the courts would say, that's not covered because sexual orientation is not listed in title seven and they would bootstrap all gay people and that can't be the case. was a eoc started doing in cases issue in 2011 and in 2014, a

case the commission voted on, a lot of these cases, delegated authority and they have issued the opinions. also a gender stereotype to thing a man should marry a woman as a host to a man. or a woman should be sexually involved with men and not women. -- a man should marry a woman and not a man. we had cases where a coworker harassed a worker because they found out they were going to marry a man. acting on this gender stereotype , of whom a man should marry. you can say that gender stereotyping would not have helped a lesbian like me. how many of you who do not know me thought when i stood up here, that must be the first openly lesbian commissioner of the eeoc? when i say this to the audience

all of them last, some of them -- last, some of them nervously. that's because i don't violate some of the gender stereotypes but i violate the most underlying gender stereotype. the course have now begun to pick it up. there was a motion to dismiss a case and it was a gay man claiming discrimination, motion to dismiss and the court said, it sounds like the person is arguing gender stereotyping. the supervisor did not think he was acting as a man should act. is also the plain language theory which is, if i come in and i say my partner, my partner and they think i'm talking about a guy and then have a picture and i have a picture of my spouse issues a woman.

suddenly, that's a problem. that's because of sex. and was interesting in terms of the bootstrapping argument, the courts have no trouble figuring out an interracial couple. if i was a woman and said my boyfriend, my boyfriend and my supervisor is imagining a white guy is imagining a white guy and suddenly a black guy walked in and i get harassed on that basis the course have not had any trouble saying that is taking race into account. the course and then say, oh, my god, that would cover a whole new category of people. instead of just men or women now women, white women dating black men and as a different category. it is the application of race. in a case that came out a few months ago hall, there was a

guy who got married to his husband asked for health insurance they didn't get it. he said five marry a woman, i will get insurance. the employer put the classic line that sexual orientation is not covered under title vii. the court denied summary judgment. reading the complaint and is said if i was a man married to a woman, i will get health insurance. i am a man married to a man and i don't and that sex discrimination. the court said i do not see anything about sexual orientation. it was not about sexual orientation -- of course. it is just now that social norms have changed, the legal logic was always there. now, social logic has changed. in a way, social logic, cultural logic had to change the for legal logic could prevail and courts could see the words in

front of them. last piece because i want to leave time for questions. lets mix included with this. 50 years ago, congress passed title vii. and set us off on a journey in which sex would not be taken into account in the workplace just as race, religion, national origin color would not be permitted to be taken into account. the journey has not been a simple one and it is not over yet. over time, the law has been understood to cover many forms of discrimination that in the 1964 congress could not have anticipated. it has generated policies on the ground to have advanced gender equity and the law has both shaped and been shipped by social norms. we all need to remain part of this great journey. and to do our bit in bringing

complete equity to our places. thank you so much for your attention. your engagement and your scholarship. all of it makes a huge difference. thank you so much. [applause] >> ok, if there are questions, you will have to come toy microphone -- come to a microphone. just come to this >> thank you for that address. want to go talk -- i want to go back to the talk from yesterday. we were talking about the debate over the 19 to do for act and whether it will succeed, you saw different people saying, at least eventually it might reach hearts and minds. i welcome hearing a little bit

more about your vision of the interplay of these things and how the element of hearts and minds and getting people on board, with those social norms. >> you can imagine, i think it really reflected, if you have not changed hearts and minds to some extent, you are not going to get a law passed. people have to feel that there is a problem. if they do not feel it is a problem like people with green eyes not getting jobs, people who tell bad jokes could get fired, if the employer doesn't like the jokes, they have to believe that something is problematic going on in society. that the democracy should respond to it. the backdrop is absolutely, at will appointment. some mindsets have changed. but, not all of them.

representative democracy means it meant 60 votes. it has always meant 60 votes in the senate for a bill. and i do think that we need to accept that we cannot, literally cannot, not only can we as a government not legislate morality or beliefs, we can to philly legend -- definitely legislate on what is right and wrong, we should not be legislating beliefs. that is the essence of a religious protection. he cannot tell someone that they have to stop believing something. but, we can send a signal through legislation of what we think is wrong and then we can say, you have to act in accordance with this unless there is an exemption that we put in for you. and then i think ultimately it

will change social norms. you need to get to a mike -- mic. >> thank you for the really terrific talk. i have two questions. the first, it has to do with the beginning when you are talking about the story and the role of title vii with sex discrimination, i kept waiting for you to talk about sexual harassment, because my view has been, as a legal matter, the creation of the legal norm against sexual harassment was remarkable coming out of the supreme court. it didn't have a lot of support in a lane which of the law. but you are telling it as a pessimistic story because of the social norm. so, i guess, i am wondering if i am reading you accurately or is there something problematic about the law?

and the second question, what has been interesting, talking about all these, i am a lot person -- law person and a lot of people tell the story that -- you are freer to do what you want, issuing guidances which will have -- but you cannot have the same distance of you are having --. lex i don't want to downplay the legal development on sexual harassment. i just feel like i spoke a little too long. you know that moment when you're like, i am lagging a little bit. i'm just going. but that is the main reason. i mean, i think that there is a

reason why the supreme court accepted it. the eoc had it put that in the guidelines. the guidelines, we have not updated them since 1979 or something. maybe minor stuff. and we did put that out for comment. it does determination guidelines. i think helped that there was an agency that spelled it out. that there were those who accepted it. it is not inherently in the plaintext, but you can get to it, because of sex, but then the courts got caught up in well you have to show desire. then it is about power. so, i do think that that -- that it is a positive story. and there are other positive stories about how the words were interpreted. to me, sexual harassment -- part of how i came up with this idea,

the laws and policies and social norms, there was something that drove me. it was the sexual-harassment harassment story, the laws have been clear. i cannot tell you how much money we are making in settlements from these cases and every employer has a policy. they have training. they have all the stuff, and yet it is like a -- like it doesn't trickle down to some coworker or supervisor. any know it is not that they want to pay the money. that why i -- that is why i think it is a partnership to them businesses and the government. the national restaurant association. out of -- advocacy groups working together. one of my colleagues on the commission, we have done a lot of things together. i think the real manifestation of bipartisanship, we want to make it clear in our plan that we were talking about sexual

harassment, that we wanted an educational campaign, not just litigation. and it happened, but in some ways, we are still fighting. so i think someone references yesterday, so when a court decides a result that is actually in line with what the eoc hasn't said, it will only say this is the agency charged with implementing the law, they have the expertise, you know, we think this makes sense. and then when they come to a result that is opposite from the eoc they say, although they don't have power to issue regular asian. in that respect, i actually think that the guidance does as much regulation, potentially.

but, right now, with the rise of the office of management and budget and -- which reviews at revelation. i think that the biggest issue that agencies have with regulation is not only the notice and,. , but getting through the white house's office of management and budget. i think that's why there are agencies that end up moving to guidances and one of the things that the commissioner and i have pushed for is putting out guidances for public input. the agency has never done that and they do not want to do it. they think it will slow things down. to me, i often say, i think that we are smart, but we are not that smart. right? might there not be benefit to

put that out and get input. obviously, it raises it as a political mare. i've been doing politics my whole life. i get that. but i am an optimist. despite all of the potential signs of the contrary. i believe that representative democracy is the best way to go. and that includes reaching out reaching out to the people. so, ok. i think we have time for one more question. and you are going to get the mice. -- mic. >> ok. i wanted to ask a question about pay because i think it is good that is backed on the -- back on the agenda. one of the biggest barriers that i have always thought to bring a more pay equality is the lack of

information that people have especially in the private sector. i have always discounted the economic studies that suggest that there is no equal pay violations, that the problem is the pay equity problem. i don't think people know, if you work for a private employer there are rules that you could get fired if you discuss pay with your coworkers. i do not think that women know what their pay is relative to the mails. i do not. i work for a private employer. i did at the university i worked out. you could file and find out. but i think the a guest thing that the eoc could do is mandate a information. they should submit that information and reported. so, i was wondering if you thought about that or why that has not been done?

>> that is a great question. a good thing to end on. i am am glad that you brought up , that there is a fair amount of equal pay violations. i might have given that a short trip, but i wanted to say that we bring those cases. we see those cases. you are right, it is a real problem and a barrier, people don't know what their pay is. i think it has been helpful that , the -- has been making it clear that even in non-unites -- non-unionized settings, people who get together and talk about wages, they can be disciplined or terminated. that is about education.

i also believe that in terms of just sex discrimination, if somebody asks about pay issues and is retaliated against for doing that, how is that not a form of sex discriminate in. again, a lot of people won't do that, because they have been told the policy is, you cannot discuss. again, the policy that says that you can discuss without making it clear what the outcome would be if you did, that does not have the same --. a lot of them don't. i do think it is important to collect data. as you know, and others may not, under the equal pay act we do have the authority to do investigation. unlike title vii where we have to have a charge come to us, or i can issue a commissioner charge if we hear about the termination. under equal pay we can go ahead and do