Wed Sep 21, 2005 5:08 PM BST
STOCKHOLM (
Reuters) - A Swedish labour court fined Ford's Volvo Car Corp 40,000 Swedish crowns (2,891 pounds) in damages on Wednesday for refusing a woman a job on an assembly line on the grounds she was too short at 160 cm (5.2 ft).
The woman, then 27, applied for a job at a Volvo car plant in Gothenburg three years ago to be told assembly line workers must be between 163 and 195 cm tall for safety reasons.
The ruling said that while Volvo was not discriminating against women on purpose, in practice a quarter to a third of all women in Sweden would not qualify to work there.
"We will review our hiring routines and it is clear that the height requirement we've had for four years will be removed," Volvo spokesman Christer Gustafsson told TT news agency.
