Ann Hopkins

Ann Branigar Hopkins (December 18, 1943 – June 23, 2018 ) was an American business manager who was the plaintiff in the landmark American employment discrimination case Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins.

Early life and education Ann Branigar Hopkins was born in Galveston, Texas, the oldest of three children, but she and her siblings grew up in Germany. Her family moved around every few years, within both Europe and the U.S., as a result of her father's military service.

Early career Hopkins began her career in aerospace at IBM, where she created mathematical models that predicted the motions of scientific and weather satellites under various conditions. She eventually moved into project management, working for several smaller aerospace firms, but decided to leave the industry in search of a more financially stable career path. her candidacy was put on indefinite hold. She eventually resigned and sued the company for sex discrimination, arguing that her lack of promotion came after pressure to walk, talk, dress, and act more "femininely". These requirements, she argued, would never have been made of a male colleague and violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Lower courts upheld Hopkins' claim, but the case eventually reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled 6-3 in 1989 that Price Waterhouse had, in fact, discriminated based on sex stereotypes.

A year after the Supreme Court ruling, a federal district judge awarded Hopkins the partnership she was originally denied at Price Waterhouse. where she worked until her retirement in 2002. The team she led became one of the most diverse and profitable in the company. Hopkins also wrote a book, So Ordered: Making Partner the Hard Way (University of Massachusetts Press, 1996), and began giving lectures on her experience.

Hopkins died in 2018.