Female not required to work overtime/ Males must?

[Wanted]

I have a question regarding gender discrimination at my workplace.
I work for a large shipping company as a delivery driver paid hourly. All drivers are told they are required to work mandatory overtime on a daily basis, which is paid time. However, there is a female employee in our work group that is never required to or requested to work this overtime. On many ocassions many of the other drivers in the area are send out in the morning with too much work and call in for help. Those drivers are left out there to work 11 or 12 hour days when she is allowed to go home in 7-8 hours. We are all guaranteed 8 hours of pay each day, therefore she often clocks out at 7 hours and is paid for the 8 hour guarantee. This female driver is also send out in the morning with about 1/2 to 2/3 of the work of the rest of us. There are many other discrepancies that take place but too much detail is required. It only gets worse! Can a company require less work from a female than a male and pay us the same wages? This seems like discrimination to me. I have approached both the immediate supervisor and the manager. Both have told me to worry about my own problems. They have told me every situation is different. Does that mean that since I dont have children at home I should be required to work 10 extra hours a week than someone that does have a child? Please help. What is my next step?

 

[JBK Georgia]

This case could be discrimination or it could be a very valid reason. Maybe she had that agreement when she was hired and nobody else thought to negotiate it. Maybe she has a medical condition that allows her to work only 7-8 hours per day. Maybe she is sleeping with the boss. Does it affect your work? Would you be better off if she were to work the same amount of overtime as you? (With a large department, I suspect that your workload would not be lessened much, with a smaller department, the impact could be significant.) Is it worth risking your job over what could very well be a legitimate reason? If, on the other hand, the department had been filled with women who were not required to work overtime but you, as the only male, were, you might have a reason to complain. I am not saying that you absolutely would not have a sex discrimination claim, I am only saying that there are some battles that should not be fought.