Walmart managers in Kentucky systematically said “no way” to women who wanted to be order fillers at a distribution center in London, KY.

They thought the warehouse job, that included heavy lifting, was not a job for a woman.

Before you get too mad, Walmart Stores was sued by the government for discrimination as a result and agreed to pay $11.7 million to settle the case.

But this situation is not unusual, and begs the question of whether there are certain jobs women just can’t handle. The supervisors at Walmart, the nation’s largest employer, thought so.

If you read the description of the job, you’d probably think twice before applying whether you’re a man or woman.

This from a Walmart ad for an order filler job that was posted on a Houston job board:

Continuously standing, stooping, bending, kneeling, reaching, pushing/pulling, handling and moving freight weighing up to 100 pounds without assistance.

The discussions I found online about the job point to how difficult it can be. Here’s one worker’s take who wrote about the job on Discovery’s website for the network’s show, “Dirty Jobs,” hosted by Mike Rowe:

The first 3 months are the worst just because your body is getting used to all the lifting and walking. This job would definitely make Mike feel like he went through training with a navy seal.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s suit filed against Walmart and the settlement announced yesterday, deal specifically with this order-filler job.

“Walmart’s London, Ky., Distribution Center denied jobs to female applicants from 1998 through February 2005. During that time period, the EEOC contends, Walmart regularly hired male entry-level applicants for warehouse positions, but excluded female applicants who were equally or better qualified.”

According to the agency, managers at the center “regularly used gender stereotypes in filling entry-level order filler positions. Hiring officials told applicants that order filling positions were not suitable for women, and that they hired mainly 18- to 25-year-old males for order filling positions.”

There are jobs that require physical strength and I can understand a hiring manager taking an applicant’s physical size or perceived strength into consideration. But what might also be going on is a Good ‘ol Boys network at the warehouse that liked the testosterone-filled environment. We probably will never know for sure.

But clearly few people care what a nurse’s weight or strength is and they do a lot of heavy lifting, literally. The nurses I’ve talked to have to deal with the ever-increasing number of obese patients out there, and many don’t have lifting equipment to help them. One nurse told me even family members don’t help out when they’re sitting in the hospital room because they expect the nurses to be able to handle their jobs.

It sort of blows my mind to hear that managers were so blatant about their discrimination in the Walmart case. It’s as if they were living in another time, or just expected people to understand that this was “man’s work.”

Should it be “man’s work?”

At a time when the job market is hurting, any opportunities not given to both genders equally seems particularly unfair. But should we sometimes take the physical requirements of a job into account? Or is gender bias gender bias no matter how you stock the employment shelves?