The Political Constitution of Peru (the “Constitution”) has several articles that directly and indirectly support women’s rights and gender justice. The Constitution recognizes that the supreme purpose of society and the State is to defend and respect the dignity of human beings (Article 1).
Employees of state hospitals in Hamburg were granted the right in 1995 to continued employment in case of privatization of the hospitals. In 2000, the cleaning staff were spun off into a separate company which was a wholly-owned subsidiary of the state hospitals. Upon privatization in 2005, the right to continued employment was applied only to those employees employed by the state hospitals, not those employed by the wholly-owned subsidiary company.
The Court held that it was in breach of the right to equal treatment enshrined in the German constitution that periods of maternity leave (which affects women only) were not counted towards certain pension benefits whereas periods of sick leave (which affects both men and women) were. English translation of 1 BvR 1409/10 available here.)
The Court held that it was unconstitutional to require an attorney without earnings to continue to make compulsory pension contributions during time taken off to care for children (up to the age of three years). The Court found that requiring such compulsory pension contributions was a breach of the right to equal treatment enshrined in the German constitution because it disproportionately affected women, who are the parent taking time off to care for small children in the vast majority of cases.
The claimant sued her employer on the grounds of discrimination after a male colleague received a promotion to a management role she had hoped for. The Court decided for the claimant, accepting statistical evidence showing that, while the majority of employees of the employer (69%) were women, no women were represented on the three most senior management levels. This was the first decision of a court accepting such statistical evidence of discrimination. This decision is now only available via subscription service.
The plaintiff exercised her right under Japanese law to reduce her working hours to spend time taking care of her child. The internal policy of her employer stated that employees who did not attend work for 90% or more of work days are ineligible for a bonus. The plaintiff’s employer counted the plaintiff’s shortened working days as absences and refused to pay her a bonus. The plaintiff sued her company for a bonus.
This appellate decision overruled the Berlin-Brandenburg Labor Court’s (Landesarbeitsgericht Berlin-Brandenburg) 2008 decision 15 Sa 517/08 which held that the plaintiff was discriminated against in the course of her employment on the basis of her gender. She sued her employer in trial labor court in Berlin on the grounds of discrimination after a male colleague received a promotion to a management role that she had hoped for and for which she considered herself to be equally qualified.
The claimant, a female employee, exercised her right under the Transparency in Wage Structures Act (available here: https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/entgtranspg/BJNR215210017.html) to obtain information from her employer about the average salary in the group of colleagues who performed the same or equivalent work as she did as a head of department. She found that her compensation was below average.
Claimant A, a salesperson at a department store, alleged that her supervisor discriminated against her for being a woman of menopausal age. The claimant had worked in retail for 37 years and had received multiple awards for being a top performer. While she initially got along with her supervisor, in May 2017, when the claimant was going through menopause, her supervisor’s attitude towards her changed. Her supervisor would frequently harass and humiliate her in front of her colleagues and customers, specifically commenting about her menopause.
Here, the employment judge found that the claimant was entitled to lost wages for the period between her resignation in December 2018 and the start of her new position in September 2019 on the grounds that the claimant “suffered a substantial reduction in her mental wellbeing” as a result of improper treatment and discrimination from her employer in relation to the claimant’s onset of menopause and was thereby entitled to damages emanating from injury to feelings. The claimant alleged that her store manager discriminated against her for being a woman of menopausal age.
