Restaurant fined $5,000 for 'sexist' ad seeking a 'hostess'

Restaurant fined $5,000 for 'sexist' ad seeking a 'hostess'
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A New York City restaurant has been hit with a $5,000 fine over claims that the business' language in a Craigslist ad and email opening habits are sexist.

A staff member at Sistina, an Italian eatery in Manhattan, made a Craigslist post looking for a new "hostess." She initially received two resume responses, one from a man and one from a woman; she replied to neither. Both, however, were part of a sting operation by the NYC Commission on Human Rights, which says that only the email with a woman's name was opened. This, plus the use of the word "hostess," meets the commission's standards for gender discrimination.

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.