Because of Sex: Book Talk with Gillian Thomas, ACLU Women's Rights Project

Description

Gillian Thomas, Senior Staff Attorney at the ACLU Women's Rights Project, will give a talk about her new book, Because of Sex: One Law, Ten Cases, and Fifty Years That Changed American Women’s Lives at Work (St. Martin’s Press 2016). Because of Sex surveys ten of the most significant Title VII sex discrimination decisions decided by the Supreme Court, as told by the women and the attorneys who brought the cases. From Phillips v. Martin Marietta Corp. (1971) to Young v. United Parcel Service (2015), the book explores how the Court – not to mention women and their employers – have navigated issues as varied as pregnancy and motherhood, sex sterotypes, physical difference between the sexes, pay discrimination, and sexual harassment, and in the process, created the modern body of law governing sex discrimination at work. The book also lends itself to discussion of current legal debates, such as the question of whether sexual orientation and gender identity are appropriately considered discrimination “because of sex” under Title VII.

The book has received wide praise from The New York Times, The New York Review of Books (reviewed by Linda Greenhouse), The LA Review of Books (by Laurie Levenson), The Boston Globe, and many others. (Links below, and St. Martin’s press release is attached.) Her work also has appeared in a variety of outlets, including The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, and Slate.

Hosted by Law Students for Reproductive Justice & Yale Law Women.