Statutes: Sex & VII

Before passing the Civil Rights Act last June, Congress stipulated that Title VII—the Equal Employment Opportunity section, which forbids discrimination in hiring and firing—was not to become law before the nation had a twelve-month period to study it. Last week Title VII finally went into effect. Hopefully the yearlong study period will pay off, for the new law is one of the most complex collections of dos and don'ts passed by Congress in many a stormy session.

Title VII expressly forbids "employers, unions and employment agencies" to practice discrimination "because of race, color, religion, sex or national origin." It just as expressly allows a host of exemptions. Italian restaurateurs, for instance, are given the privilege of employing Italian chefs. Baptist clergymen may go right on hiring Baptist sextons. In one instance, Title VII authorizes reverse discrimination. The act gives employers ranging from Minnesota wild-rice farmers to New Mexico electronics manufacturers the option of hiring only American Indians.

Nowhere does the new law promise more trouble than in its ruling against sex discrimination—in everything from help-wanted ads to promotions within firms. Virginia's Representative Howard Smith slipped the sex provision into the bill in an attempt to delay voting on the measure. Presumably, he hoped that his fellow male Congressmen would boggle at granting equal employment rights to women. There was some opposition—New York's Representative Emanuel Celler worried that to give women equal rights might affect just about every legal dealing between men and women—from divorce and property settlements to statutory rape.

But Congress recognized that equal employment status does not mean equal rights, and Smith's delaying tactic failed. Now women can apply for jobs from stevedore to sewer cleaner—though one exemption of Title VII permits employers to disqualify women where sex is a bona fide "occupational qualification." The Title nowhere defines what such a disqualification might be. "What do we do," asked an airline personnel manager, "when a girl walks in here with the credentials and asks for a pilot's job?" The possibilities are boundless. Must Cleveland's Exclusively Girls Employment Service change its name and its mission? Does the Marine Cooks and Stewards Union have the right to reject a waitress whose work would put her in the same cabin with three men? Neither the Justice Department nor the new Equal Employment Opportunity Commission set up to enforce Title VII is looking forward to ruling on such questions.