【正文】 中文 3544 字 （本科 畢 業(yè)論 文 ） 外文文獻(xiàn)及譯文 文獻(xiàn)、資料題目： Legal Framework for Equal Employment (Human Resource Management Chapter4) 1 外文文獻(xiàn)： Legal Framework for Equal Employment Laws on Sex/Gender Discrimination A number of laws and regulation address discrimination on the bases of sex/gender .Historically, women experienced employment discrimination in a variety of ways. The inclusion of sex as a basis for protectedclass status in Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act has led to various areas of protection for women. Pregnancy Discrimination The Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA) of 1978 requires that any employer with 15or more employees treat maternity leave the same as other personal or medical leaves. Closely related to the PDA is the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) of 1993, which requires to the PDA is the Family and Medical Leave of family leave without pay and also requires that those taking family leave be allowed to return to jobs (see Chapter 14 for details). The FMLA applies to both men and women. In court cases it generally has been ruled that the PDA requires employers to treat pregnant employees the same as no pregnant employees with similar abilities or inabilities. Therefore, an employer was ruled to have acted properly when terminating a pregnant employee for excessive absenteeism due to pregnancyrelated illnesses because the employee was not treated differently than other employee with absenteeism problem. However, in another case, a dental employee who was fired five days after she told her manager that she was pregnant was awarded $18,460 by a court decision that ruled her employer violated the PDA. Two other areas somewhat related to pregnancy and motherhood also have been subjects of legal and regulatory action. The . Equal Employment Commission has ruled that denial of health insurance coverage for prescription contraceptives under employerprovided health plans violates the PDA. A result of this ruling is that employers who have changed their health insurance plans to offer contraceptive coverage may face increases in benefit costs. A number of states have passed laws that guarantee breastfeeding rights at work for new mothers. Although attempts have been to enact such legislation at the federal level, that legislation has not been enacted yet. Equal Pay and Pay Equity The Equal Pay Act of 1963 requires employers to pay similar 2 wage rates for similar work without regard to gender. A mon core of tasks must be similar, but tasks performed only intermittently or infrequently do not make jobs different enough to justify significantly different wages. Differences in pay may be allowed because of: (1) differences in seniority, (2) differences in performance, (3) differences in quality and/or quantity of production, and (4) factors other than sex, such as skill, effort, and working conditions. For example, a university was found to have violated the Equal Pay Act by paying a female professor a starting salary lower than salaries paid to male professors with similar responsibilities. In fact, the court found that the woman professor with taught larger classes and had more total students than some of the male faculty members. Another payrelated theory is pay equity, which is that the pay for jobs requiring parable levels of knowledge, skill, and ability should be similar, even if actual duties differ significantl