et al. Heckler v. Mathews

Women have long fought for equal rights in areas of compensation that range from pay to benefits; but cases such as Heckler signify a counter-trend, that of reverse-discrimination lawsuits. The most famous of these was University of California v. Bakke (1978), which challenged reverse discrimination on the basis of race; but challenges on the basis of gender have been viewed differently by the Supreme Court. This is perhaps because gender, unlike race, was not a factor in the drafting or the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Part of what makes questions about reverse discrimination difficult is the fact that they can be approached on different levels. There is, for instance, the political or legal level, based on the Constitution, statutes, and general beliefs about fairness. But there are also viewpoints based on tradition or on actual practices. Thus for instance alimony laws, which have tended to favor women, are written that way because past experience--at least, prior to the 1970s--showed that women were more likely than men to be financially hurt in a divorce settlement.