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Monday's Supreme Court decision to block a class-action sex-discrimination lawsuit against Wal-Mart was a huge setback for as many as 1.6 million current and former female employees of the world's largest retailer. But the decision has consequences that range far beyond sex discrimination or the feasibility of class-action suits. The underlying issue, which the Supreme Court has now confirmed, is Wal-Mart's authoritarian style, by which executives pressure store-level management to squeeze more and more from millions of clerks, stockers and lower-tier managers.

Indeed, the sex discrimination at Wal-Mart that drove the recent suit is the product not merely of managerial bias and prejudice, but also of a corporate culture and business model that sustains it, rooted in the company's very beginnings. A male-dominated corporate culture was written into the Wal-Mart DNA. "Welcome Assistant Managers and Wives" read a banner at a 1975 meeting for executive trainees.

Moreover, the traditional corporate culture has been reconfigured into a more systematically authoritarian structure, one that deploys a communitarian belief to sustain a high degree of corporate loyalty even as wages and working conditions are put under continual downward pressure. Workers of both sexes pay the price, but women, who constitute more than 70 percent of hourly employees, pay more.

There are tens of thousands of experienced Wal-Mart women who would like to be promoted to the first managerial rung, salaried assistant store manager. But Wal-Mart makes it impossible for many of them to take that post, because its ruthless management style structures the job itself as one that most women, and especially those with young children or a relative to care for, would find difficult to accept. Why? Because, for all the change that has swept over the company, at the store level there is still a fair amount of the old communal sociability. Recognizing that workers steeped in that culture make poor candidates for assistant managers, who are the front lines in enforcing labor discipline, Wal-Mart insists that almost all workers promoted to the managerial ranks move to a new store, often hundreds of miles away.

For young men in a hurry, that's an inconvenience; for middle-aged women caring for families, this corporate reassignment policy amounts to sex discrimination. True, Wal-Mart is hardly alone in demanding that rising managers sacrifice family life, but few companies make relocation such a fixed policy, and few have employment rolls even a third the size. The obstacles to women's advancement do not stop there. The workweek for salaried managers is around 50 hours or more, which can surge to 80 or 90 hours a week during holiday seasons. Not unexpectedly, some managers think women with family responsibilities would balk at such demands, and it is hardly to the discredit of thousands of Wal-Mart women that they may be right.

6. The lawsuit is mentioned in the first paragraph to______.

[A] show that women belong to the oppressed minority in Wal-Mart

[B] introduce Wal-Mart's essential problem of authoritarian culture

[C] demonstrate Wal-Mart's impact on the Supreme Court's decision

[D] explain the causes of Wal-Mart's authoritarian culture

7. Which of the following is true of Wal-Mart's traditional corporate culture?

[A] It brings an adverse impact only on female workers.

[B] It makes sex-discrimination acceptable in the management.

[C] It is effective in maintaining employees' faithfulness.

[D] It causes high rate of resignation among women employees.

8. Competent women are hard to get a promotion in Wal-Mart because______.

[A] their male counterparts are more competitive

[B] the relocation requirement is difficult for them to accept

[C] bad habits formed in their communities make them less competitive

[D] they can't discipline employees due to their inborn tenderness

9. We learn from the last paragraph that______.

[A] few companies have staff as large as that of Wal-Mart

[B] middle-aged women have less energy compared with young men

[C] Wal-Mart managers disgrace women by not promoting them

[D] the relocation policy is the only thing women cannot tolerate

10. The author's attitude towards Wal-Mart's corporate culture is______.

[A] disapproving

[B] supportive

[C] indifferent

[D] doubtful