When you’re a foreigner and a woman, there’s no room for discrimination
At a restaurant in a sleepy city in southern Chile, a woman ordered a plate of shrimp that had a green color.
When the waiter asked for a different dish, the woman told him that she was a foreigner.
“I didn’t expect that,” he said.
In other countries, it would be difficult for women to be asked for their identity documents in restaurants, and even if they were, it is still illegal for employers to ask about them.
In the United States, there are only a handful of restaurants that ask for a woman’s identity card, and only a small number that ask about it at the counter.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2015 that businesses must make clear that employees must be given their own names and addresses to be considered for promotions, and that employers can not discriminate against applicants based on their gender or race.
But even in the United Kingdom, where the government has limited gender-specific hiring and promotion requirements, women who want to use the gender-neutral pronouns of “they” or “them” are often told they are too young to apply.
“When you’re not a woman or a person of color, there is not much room for a discrimination,” said Michelle Ritter, who worked in the restaurant industry for 20 years.
The rules in the U.K. are more stringent than those in the rest of Europe, where gender-based discrimination is largely ignored, and some U.N. experts have said they are considering a recommendation to introduce gender-sensitive gender-identity tests for new hires.
A recent study in the journal Gender and Society found that in the past five years, discrimination against women in the workplace has increased at a faster rate than discrimination against men.
“It’s not only the discrimination that is growing,” said Rachel Smith, an associate professor of sociology at Yale University who studies discrimination against people of color.
“The number of people of colour who are discriminated against is growing.”
Smith’s research shows that discrimination against Black and brown people in the labor market has gone up, and she said the government’s recent focus on “fairness” in hiring has led to a push to raise standards for Black and Latino people in order to make sure they are given the same opportunities to succeed.
“We are seeing a backlash against fairness,” Smith said.
But while the U., U.L., and the UAW have pushed for gender-equity policies in workplaces and universities, the UG and other unions have not done the same.
That has created a backlash among members of the Black and Hispanic community, who say the lack of equality in their communities means they are being treated unfairly in the job market.
“These people are the future,” said Maria Martinez, an undocumented worker who has worked at the restaurant in the town of Tocagoland for the past four years.
“They’re the ones who are going to start the economic change.”
The restaurant has been open for six months and has grown from a small restaurant to a full-service eatery with two full-time employees.
Employees are paid $7.50 an hour, a small increase from the minimum wage in the state of Arizona, but it is not enough to cover the cost of food, rent, health insurance, and other costs, Martinez said.
The workers are told that they are working on the minimum, but they do not receive overtime pay.
The owners are still trying to find another location.
But with the recent decision to increase minimum wages, the employees who are now on the payroll say the company is starting to feel like it is a part of their lives.
“Now we have to decide if we are going for minimum wage or not,” said Carlos Guzman, the manager of the restaurant.
“If we stay here, it’s not good.”
But Martinez and others say they are hopeful that the minimum wages will eventually increase, and they hope that employers will recognize that the work they are doing in their restaurants is valuable and deserve to be treated with dignity.
“Hopefully it’s going to get us some higher minimum wage, because I’m a person who is in the middle of a fight,” Martinez said, adding that the restaurant is not doing well financially.
“This is a way of life for us,” she said.
“But now it’s our turn.”