Accommodating the Female Body

Abstract:     
This essay presents a novel approach to understanding sex discrimination in the workplace by integrating three distinct areas of scholarship: disability studies, labor law, and architectural design. Borrowing from disabilities studies, I argue that the built environment serves as a situs of sex discrimination. In the first section, I explain how the concept of disability has progressed from a problem located within the body of an individual with a disability to the failings of the built environment in which that person functions. Using this paradigm, in the next section, I reframe workplaces constructed for male workers as instruments of sex discrimination. I then explain how built environments intended for the male body constitute disparate impact under Title VII. In the final section, I present the architectural school of universal design, which has been a source of crucial innovation in the disability labor rights framework, as a means for both de-abling and de-sexing the workplace.

Keywords: Law, Women, Employment, Discrimination, Antidiscrimination, Sex Discrimination, Title VII, Disability, Universal Design, Gender, Accommodation, Built Environment, Workplace, Facially Neutral

JEL Classifications: J70, J71, J78, J79, K19, K31, K39

Accepted Paper Series