Various workers at Wal-Mart stores and suppliers in over 12 cities have engaged in walkouts and one-day strikes. They’re protesting the chain’s crackdown on their organization OUR Walmart, which, while not being a formal labor union, is still serving as an organizing vehicle for workers to make their grievances known.

One place these grievances aren’t being heard is the courts. Last year, a class action law suit alleging gender discrimination that would’ve allowed 1.5 million female employees to sue Wal-Mart was thrown out by the Supreme Court.

Now, there are a new flurry of suits related to Wal-Mart’s gender discrimination. Here’s the case of one woman who was discriminated against for years:

When a manager told Christina Going in 2000 that she made less money hourly than her male Walmart counterparts because “single moms like you don’t deserve to make as much” because “you should be in a two-income household,” she figured that level of sexism had to be rare.

“I was flabbergasted,” said Going, who now lives in Palm Beach County. “He was basically telling me I should be married, and that women aren’t supposed to support their families. But I figured this guy was just one jerk.”

But, she said, her four-year career at a rural location of the megastore in Hendry County proved to her that this level of discrimination was in fact endemic among Walmart’s management.

Over four years, she saw many men with less experience get promoted over her and no one listened when she demanded she make as much as men doing the same job, she said. She quit in 2003.

Today, the corporation is having its shareholders meeting in Bentonsville, Arkansas. It’s unlikely that the voices of underpaid and discriminated against workers will be heard there. But through actions like the strikes rolling the country, Wal-Mart employees may finally be able to get the company to take notice of their situation.