A female employee of GEMA (The Society for Performance Rights) in Germany recently set a precedence in German labour law. Shortly after the new EEO (Equal Employment Opportunity) legislation was introduced in 2007, she took her employer to court: she felt she was discriminated against whilst pursuing a promotion for one of the organisation’s top 16 positions.

She argued that she was as well qualified as her male colleague who got the job. She convinced the judge that this was a case of discrimination using statistical evidence based on an expert’s report. The reasoning was straightforward: the report showed that with 85% of the organisation’s workforce being female the probability that all 16 top managers are male was far below 1%. The judge agreed that this was just too unlikely to happen without active discrimination against women. He therefore ruled that the woman should receive a payment to make up for the difference in salary plus 20,000 Euros in damages.