Women Accuse Wal-Mart of Bias

June 19 -- The country's largest private employer, Wal-Mart Stores Inc., is being sued by a number of its female employees who claim they were kept out of jobs in management because they are women.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in San Francisco, accuses the Bentonville, Ark.-based retailer of a systematic pattern of discrimination against women.

While only six women are named in the complaint, the suit seeks class-action status to collect damages for more than 700,000 current and former female employees of Wal-Mart. If certified, a class action would make this the biggest suit ever filed against a private employer and could mean monetory damages of hundreds of millions of dollars, as well as punitive damages.

Trying to Shatter a "Glass Ceiling"

"I guess you could say I was Walmatized," says Stephanie Odle. "I gave up my nights, my days, my weekends, my holidays. Time and again the jobs I should have had were given to men."

Odle is part of the lawsuit that charges Wal-Mart with "denying female employees equal job assignments, promotions, training and compensation."

A Wal-Mart spokesman told ABCNEWS the retailer doesn't condone any kind of discrimination and that the company's policy is to promote the best people to available positions.

But the plaintiffs hope this lawsuit will change the way they say Wal-Mart treats its women employees.

"Wal-Mart has operated the largest glass ceiling for its women employees in the country and we want to shatter it," says Joe Sellers, an attorney representing the plaintiffs. "We want to dismantle the procedures and practices by which Wal-Mart has kept its female employees from getting promoted."

Employee of the Year Never Promoted

Kimberly Miller, one of the plaintiffs in the case, says she worked for nine years at a Wal-Mart store in Ocala, Fla., without ever receiving a promotion.

"I received employee-of-the-month twice," Miller says, "and employee of the year once, in 1995. And still, I never received a promotion."