In its decision to throw out the sex discrimination lawsuit filed by 1.6 million women workers against retail giant Wal-Mart, the Supreme Court concluded that there was insufficient evidence that each of these women — who worked at different jobs and in different states — had been harmed in the same way.

In other words, in order to file a class-action suit, the plaintiffs must have more in common than just their sex. And, by the way, they need to show that the discriminatory practices they allege are written down somewhere and not just winks and whispers among the bosses.

In the aftermath of the decision, the women and their lawyers promised that Wal-Mart would now feel what it is like to be pecked to death by ducks, and they would come at the company with thousands of individual lawsuits.

Wal-Mart seems to be a particularly dreadful place for anybody to work, let alone a woman who is likely pulling a second shift at home. Requirements to work overtime with no notice, mandatory overnight shifts, hellish holiday hours, few promotions or raises and a healthy collection of boorish bosses.

But the sexist corporate culture that the plaintiffs allege is present in plenty of other workplaces, even if it is not codified as the Supreme Court required. It has just been driven underground by feminism and political correctness and is less visibly offensive.

The evidence?

Women continue to earn about 77 cents for every dollar earned by their male counterparts, a number that has remained stubbornly unchanged since women entered the workforce in great numbers 40 years ago.

I'll bet every working woman can identify the reasons for that salary difference, and not all of those reasons have to do with meeting the school bus at 3 p.m., as opponents of reform would like us to believe.

Maryland Sen. Barbara Mikulski expressed her displeasure with the Supreme Court decision, saying correctly that the court has "placed another hurdle at the courthouse door for women seeking compensation for wage discrimination."

Senator Mikulski successfully pushed through the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which all but removed the statute of limitations on pay discrimination suits, and she is fighting to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would open confidential salary records and prohibit retaliation by employers.

Senator Mikulski and her colleagues in Congress introduced a bill last week that would "provide women with a pathway to higher-paying job fields in which they are currently underrepresented."

Right now, women are over-represented in low-paying, dead-end jobs — like working at Wal-Mart — and are only a tiny fraction of electricians and plumbers. And we all know how much those guys make.

I wish our representatives all the best, but it is hard to imagine that we can legislate away the sexism (and racism) that permeates our culture and therefore our workplaces. It is everywhere, like dust motes. It is equally hard to imagine that we can dismantle the informal sharing of money and power among the privileged and their pals. You don't have to have a "whites only" sign on the door to keep people out.

There was some thought that this suit would fail simply because Wal-Mart was too big to challenge — a monolith, the largest retailer in the world with more than 2 million workers in more than 8,300 stores. A true Goliath.

But I think it is the corporate culture that is too big to take down.

Susan Reimer's column appears Mondays. Her email is susan.reimer@baltsun.com.