Sara, a recent graduate, accepts a position at a small engineering design firm. Her new colleagues form a tightly knit, congenial group, and she often joins them for get togethers after work. Several months after she joins the firm, the firm’s president advises her that his wife has objected to her presence on the staff, feeling that it is inappropriate for a young, single female to work and socialize with a group of male engineers, many of whom are married. The president’s wife encouraged him to terminate Sara’s employment, and although the president himself has no issues with Sara or her work, he suggests to her that she should look for another employer. Everyone in the firm become aware of the wife’s objections, and Sara begins to notice a difference in her work environment. Although her colleagues are openly supportive of her, she nevertheless feels that the wife’s comments have altered their perception of her. She stops receiving invitations to her company’s parties and is excluded from after-hours gatherings. Even worse, although previously she had found her work both interesting and challenging, she no longer receives assignments from the firm’s president and she begins to sense that her colleagues are treating her as someone who will not be a long-term member of the staff. Believing that she is no longer taken seriously as an engineer and that she will have little opportunity to advance within the firm, she begins searching for a new position. However, before she can do so her supervisor announces a downsizing of the firm, and she is the first engineer to be laid off.6

Use the Engineering Ethics Matrix to examine potential ethics violations for an engineering employer to exclude and ultimately discharge an employee on the basis of sex, age, or marital status.