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By Jesse Coburn and Matt Clark
“Whenever you’re looking at issues like this, you cannot discount the possibility of discrimination,” Bellone said. “There may be discriminatory impact without there even being an intent.”
Chandra Childers, a researcher at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, a Washington D.C. think tank, said women who seek work in male-dominated fields can “face harassment and abuse, which often pushes them back out.”
Discrimination has been a central contention in decades of lawsuits brought by female employees of Long Island’s municipal and county governments over the gender pay gap, records show.