The Miami Herald, June 6, 2003

Far-left feminists have developed a habit of showcasing what is wrong with their movement. Consider, for example, the new crusade against Wal-Mart.

Founded by Sam Walton of Bentonville, Ark., in 1962, the retailer has become the world's largest private employer, with nearly one million employees and 3,400 stores. While that growth has been good for the company, its employees and consumers, feminists charge that Wal-Mart discriminates against women in both pay and promotion and encourages a corporate culture that seeks to keep women in their place. They're doing this in a lawsuit; if approved as a class-action suit, it would be the largest such action on record. It seeks back pay and punitive damages for all women who worked at Wal-Mart since December 1998.

Declarations in April included complaints of pay inequities, denied promotions, business lunch meetings held at a Hooters restaurant and purported statements by various male Wal-Mart employees that the role of the man is to be ``the breadwinner.''

Follow the Money

Wal-Mart spokesmen say that scattered statements by employees do not amount to a corporate policy of sex discrimination. They point out that in 90 percent of their stores, women's pay is substantially the same as men's and that they promoted the same percentage of women who applied for management positions.

The case follows the tired feminist stereotypes of women as victims, men as villains and large corporations as inherently evil. This brand of feminism believes that women and men are undifferentiated commodities, and it does not allow that women might not want to apply for management positions in the same percentage as men.

Observers of the case should heed the Watergate rule of ''follow the money.'' Wal-Mart is an obvious deep-pockets target. That is why militant attorneys are suing the retailer, and not some local department store.

The most vocal critics of Wal-Mart are women from South Carolina, Florida and Indiana. The suit, however, was filed in San Francisco, which makes perfect sense. The corporate shakedown requires careful judge shopping. Power, along with money, is also in play.

Besides its size and success, Wal-Mart also has committed the sin of being a nonunion operation. Unions have plummeted from 30 percent of the workforce in the 1950s to less than 13 percent today.

Only in the public sector are unions growing. Union bosses, overwhelmingly male and very highly paid, know that organizing Wal-Mart would boost a moribund movement.

Last September, the National Organization for Women named Wal-Mart its ''National Merchant of Shame'' over labor issues. It does seem rather strange, however, that if Wal-Mart is such a bastion of oppression that so many millions of women still choose to work and shop there.

Women represent 66 percent of Wal-Mart's hourly workforce and 80 percent of department managers. Perhaps many women choose to work at Wal-Mart because it offers profit-sharing and bonus programs, both triggered by the free-market incentives despised by unions. Wal-Mart also contributes to a 401(K), up to 2 percent of pay, even if the employee does not contribute.

There will be a hearing in the Wal-Mart case on July 25. Even without a ruling, the case shows that the liberal branch of feminism is losing on the battlefield of ideas. That's why it is now shifting its campaign to the courts.

Sally C. Pipes, a Canadian, is president and CEO of the California-based Pacific Research Institute. She can be reached at spipes@pacificresearch.org.