Sex Discrimination or Overreaction?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/hampshire/8496532.stm

Chief Petty Officer Jacqueline Cartner, of the HMS Collingwood of the British Royal Navy, won a tribunal regarding sex discrimination. The ordeal began when Cartner was passed over for a promotion to a warrant officer. Because of her winning of the case she is expected to be awarded the equivalence of 10 years’ pay is an agreement is not properly made with the Royal Navy.

Kam Bains, Cartner’s solicitor, said that the British tribunal had found that the Royal Navy had discriminated against the sailor which violated the Sex Discrimination Act of 1975. Bains also noted that the Royal Nay’s promotion system was “a matter of concern” and that its procedures were “primitive” in a sense.

The case, held in Southampton, reviewed the decision of the Royal Navy’s promotion board back in 2008. During that promotion session, Cartner was the only female candidate considered for promotion against a number of male candidates. Cartner’s grounds for complaint stemmed from an analysis of the male candidate’s experience. She believed that she was a better candidate because she had carried out the role of warrant officer in an acting capacity since 2006, while none of the other male candidates did not.

Cartner has received numerous awards throughout her career as she was selected as the NATO Military Member of the Year in 2000 and an MBE (Member British Empire) in 2001. According to Bains, she had been promoted to each and every rank faster than every one of her competitors and regularly outperformed her male peers.
Cartner explains her feelings of this whole situation, “This has been a very long and painful road for both me and my family, and I am sad that it has had to come this far… However, I am glad that the tribunal ruling has served to vindicate my claims of sex discrimination.”

In this article I see a few things at work here: Status Positions of Functionalist Theory and Institutionalized Discrimination. In the case of status positions, when the issue at hand is the military, most people would agree that it would be males who succeed in the physical nature of war, preparation, strength, etc. When the issue of women in the military comes up, which is already a controversial issue, most people would agree that women would not be inclined to succeed as much as or more than the men who carry out the same functions. In the case of Cartner, her achievements violated the status position of women in the military because she was outperforming men who are “supposed” to do better than women and this may have created some sort of discriminatory effect with those of the promotional board.

Because of this predetermined discrimination, I see this relating to the concept of Institutional Discrimination. Basically I see this at work because although Cartner has more awards, credentials, experience than her male peers involved in the same promotional hearing, she was passed up. In the case of a military institution, I wholeheartedly believe that her concerns were genuine. The military institution is a male dominated one and I wouldn’t be suprised if that promotion board was filled with all males. Institutional Discrimination can stem from a conscious or subconscious discrimination which is bias to their own interests; in this case it was the male sex. According to the Parillo text, “[T]he dominant group will not hesitate to act discriminatorily of it thinks that this approach will effectively undercut the minority group (women in the military) as a social competitor.” I feel that some sense of bias/discrimination is rooted because of Cartner's rise to success as a female in the Royal Navy.