by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

I love women. I empathize with them. I feel their pain, bob my head knowingly to India.Arie and truly have, as my clever headline suggests, suffered as a woman. If you don’t believe me, I’ve got a team of experts fighting at the highest levels to prove the extent of the prejudice I’ve endured as a victim of anti-female bias. For many moons, an expensive array of technical experts has been analyzing and debating the dollar value of my misfortune. And their efforts will continue until I am compensated for the inclinations that caused me to suffer as a victim of ingrained anti-female societal values.

The last I heard my team of experts was gunning at something like $50,000 for what I underwent while working cheek-to-jowl in the communication trenches in an office staffed predominantly by females. These included Mona the sports nut, street-savvy Ilmi, the gentle Maciukas sisters, Vicky, who married a pizza delivery guy, deadpan Liliane, various fabulous girls named Isabelle, and fast-talking Aline, as well as many other salty female cynics of the working world.

My fellow male minority included Dougie, who had the rare talent of not looking miserable while at work, a duo of Italian experts-on-every-subject who evolved from buddies to bitter foes, Dave the Salvadorian flirtation addict and several separatists that I politely nodded to while gingerly choosing a seat at a safe distance, with the exception of my buddy Louis-Martin Doutre, author of a self-published novel recommending violent anti-anglo revolution.

From the fifth floor of the old Bell building near the train station we’d type words that our deaf clients would read on their computer screens, then, for the benefit of a hearing person on the other end, we’d read aloud messages typed by the deaf. Day and night we helped the deaf order everything from pizzas to hookers; we sat in as lovers hammered out their intimate troubles, we endured frequent and torturously dull mother-daughter chitchats.

After a couple of bitter and long strikes we got our salaries to $18.50 an hour with lots of possibilities for overtime. Eventually Bell eviscerated the union through transfers, buyouts and subcontracting, but not before we noticed that just across the hall a room full of male technicians were doing very similar tasks for considerably more money.

Our union seized upon this injustice and complained to the Canadian Human Rights Commission. We demanded retroactive and immediate compensation to make up for the unjustified difference in pay. My colleagues all loudly denounced Bell’s offer of $10,000 each to drop the suit, although the offer was still reasonable to the 49 per cent who secretly voted to take the money and run. Our union waited for judges to decide whether Bell should be ordered to pay up. We waited. A lot.

Since all this started in 1992, decisions were rendered, appeals launched, lawyer invoices mailed. And it’s far from over. The Commission expects to keep analyzing our complaint until at least until 2004. As Commission media flak Mike Glynn explains, the commission meets about 40 times a year to consider the financial insult we suffered. It’s a “very technical process” that requires experts to give a “statistical analysis” about “wage adjustment methodologies” and “analyze labour and collective bargaining agreements,” he says.

Since the case was launched, so long ago, one of the judges has quit and moved back to Edmonton. Assuming that we win - as did women plaintiffs from the Treasury Board and Canada Post - Bell will undoubtedly continue to battle the order to pay us beleaguered chicks kajillions in compounded back wages. Bell, however, will undoubtedly fight the order at the Federal Court of Appeal and then the Supreme Court. Hopefully I’ll still be alive to enjoy the soothing balm of cash compensation for my female sufferings and won’t be too debilitated by menopause and varicose veins or some shit.:

Comments? kgravy@openface.ca