The following article, publish in Reuters gives further credance to the work that Marlen is doing ...

- A female executive who has risen through the ranks of corporate America may have an impressive title and a six-figure salary, but the trappings of success are irrelevant the minute she enters a restaurant or liquor store. Indeed, even with a Harvard degree and a much more visible Armani suit and Coach briefcase, a woman may seem invisible to a waiter or salesman who has a male customer in sight. "Almost every woman I've talked to has a story," said Tim Zagat, co-publisher of Zagat restaurant surveys. Information compiled for the new 2000 edition of the Zagat Survey of America's Top Restaurants showed that 83 percent of respondents felt that men are treated better than women when eating out.

The survey is based on questionnaires answered by about 100,000 respondents throughout this year and last and compiled in Zagat guides for individual cities. The America's Top Restaurants guide describes 1,130 leading restaurants in 38 cities and provides ratings for food, decor, service and cost. In breaking out the results, Zagat said 90 percent of respondents in the San Francisco area felt that men were treated better; in New York it was 80 percent.

MEN GET THE CHECK - AND THE SERVICE

"This suggests that, when dining in mixed company, men are targeted as as primary check payers by restaurant staff, who lavish better service their way," Zagat said. When men and women dine together, he said, men are usually given the wine list and asked to choose and taste the wine, regardless of the expertise of the women at the table. Women diners also say they are treated like second-class citizens when they dine alone or with other women and they often get inferior tables and service, Zagat said. JoEllen Zacks, a media relations manager for the American Bar Association in Chicago, agreed, saying restaurants often try to seat her in the back when she dines alone while on the road. "I ask to be moved; I'm not shy about it," she said.

Zacks said women may also receive inferior service because of a perception that they do not tip as well as men. "It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. We don't get treated well, so we tip accordingly," she said. Zagat said some French, Italian and Spanish restaurants and steakhouses also discriminate against women by refusing to let them work as servers, who can earn lucrative tips. This is true most often in New York and other Northeastern metropolitan areas where some restaurants still "look to Europe," he said. Industry experts say the no-women wait staff policy remains standard in many elegant restaurants, where tuxedo-clad waiters are considered part of the prestige of upscale dining.

PEOPLE OBLIVIOUS TO 'BLATANT DISCRIMINATION

"There is some blatant discrimination going on and people seem oblivious to it," Zagat said. "As you go further west, restaurants are more inclined to hire women." The practice has generated some litigation. For example, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer sued the Cipriani restaurant family in August for denying women jobs that can generate more than $95,000 annually. The family's U.S. company is 100 percent owned by Cipriani SpA, an Italian corporation. Juanita Scarlett, a Spitzer spokeswoman, said the attorney general plans to sue additional restaurants early next year.

Marlene Rossman, president of the Rossman, Graham Associates marketing firm in New York, said there are similar problems at liquor stores in the city, where there are few women salespeople and female customers are often treated poorly. "By and large, even as a woman with a lot of buying power, I'm not treated in the same way as a man in a similar situation," said Rossman, who is also president of the New York chapter of Women for WineSense, an educational group.

She conducted a study to prove her point, sending teams of shoppers and observers unannounced to 11 Manhattan liquor stores between August and November. The shoppers included a middle-aged white female, an Asian American female, a black female and a white male. Each shopper was instructed to get advice on a wine to go with trout. "The white male got the best service, the white woman indifference or condescending service; the Asian American was either ignored or given patronising service and worst of all was the service received by the black woman," a summary of the findings said. "I was either ignored or treated with disdain," the black shopper said in the report. "My overall impression was that of very condescending service. They salesmen didn't know or care if I had a clue about wine." She said most salesmen assumed she wanted an inexpensive wine, showing her bottles under $10 even though they did not ask her price range. On at least one occasion, she was followed around the store by a security guard. "If the Gap treated women the way wine shops do they would have three people left to shop there," Rossman said of the clothing store chain.

Dr. Wanda Dobrich, a psychologist and partner of D and D Industrial Consultants of Montclair, New Jersey, which conducts gender bias training for employers, said while men in service positions sometimes are demeaning to women on purpose, often they simply do not understand their behaviour is insulting. For example, they might not realise that there is anything wrong with seating a woman in the back of a restaurant. "We are seen very differently in a space where men traditionally make decisions ... men don't know how to relate to us," she said. Women also may have difficulty speaking up to ask for a different table or complain about service, Dobrich said, explaining that women are often socially conditioned to be more polite and are concerned about seeming to be rude or "bitchy." "What do you do when you are treated, but treated lesser?" she asked. "How much assertiveness is too much? Women need to simply state what they want." (C) Reuters Limited 1999.

Male and White Get Better Service / Study: Manhattan wine shops discriminate BY: By Alan J. Wax. STAFF WRITER EDITION: ALL EDITIONS SECTION: Business DATE: 12-08-1999 A57

A new study of Manhattan wine shops has found that women and diverse consumers visiting the stores routinely got inferior service compared to white males. "The results confirmed our perception that in New York City, at least, where wine and liquor is not sold in supermarkets, wine is a white-male preserve," said Marlene Rossman, president of the Manhattan market research firm Rossman, Graham Associates, which released the study's findings Monday.

The study was conducted by sending a mystery shopper and an observer to 11 wine retailers, including some of the city's best-known wine merchants and mom-and-pop stores, in different areas of Manhattan. Rossman declined to identify the stores. The shoppers included a black woman, an Asian-American woman, a white woman and a white male.

Rossman, a professional wine educator and sommelier as well as a marketing consultant, said she undertook the study because of what she perceived as poor service provided to women in Manhattan wine shops. "I've done a lot of wine shopping," she said. "I get mediocre service." Among the results: The black woman was followed around, shouted at and insulted; the Asian-American women was either ignored, not taken seriously or offered low-priced wines; the white woman was treated indifferently and was interrupted by sales clerks attempting to answer questions from men. Meanwhile, sales representatives tripped over themselves trying to serve the white male, according to the survey results.

Rossman, who is also the New York chapter president of Women for WineSense, an educational group, said she had expected the better-known shops to treat women better, but that wasn't necessarily the case. She cited the experience of a black female shopper at a prominent downtown wine shop who ended up in a shouting match with a sales clerk after she protested the clerk's attempt to sell her a heavy red wine to serve with a light fish dish.

Rossman's said the study findings were fairly consistent from shop to shop. "I'm not surprised. I believe it does exist," Roberta Morrell, an owner of Morrell&Co. in Rockefeller Center, said of the discrepancies, adding that sales staffers often become wine snobs who prefer talking to men, whom she said generally are more wine knowledgeable than women. "I don't think it's acceptable," she said of the practice. "All I can guess is that women and men are very different retail consumers," said Morrell, noting that women consumers generally are more hurried and shop for a wine to serve at dinner, while men shop for wine to cellar.

At Union Square Wines&Spirits, general manager Katherine Moore said that as a black woman "I've been made to feel very unwelcome in some other shops." She said it was unlikely women would receive less service than men in her shop, because it employs three women and four men. "We also have a group of very educated female customers," she added. Rossman's study was conducted between August and November. Shoppers visited stores Mondays through Thursdays between 6-8 p.m.

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