As one of my colleagues wrote earlier this fall, a woman should not have to choose between having a job and having a baby. Laura Brown agrees. With Keira McNett, Laura founded First Shift Justice Project earlier this year to protect workers in their “first shift”—their paid employment—so they can work the “second shift”—providing unpaid care for family members. As a lawyer who represents several women…
Most women—no, all women—have had the experience of receiving unsolicited feedback on their physical appearance. Such commentary comes in many forms, from lewd remarks or demands for a “smile” on the street, to irksome discussions with well-meaning relatives about how much “prettier” one might look with a different hairstyle. Women have long fought against these fleeting indignities, including a recent…
As I noted last week, it’s time for the tech industry to acknowledge its systemic bias against women. Once that happens, the industry will be much more likely to do something about the problem. Tech has proudly “disrupted” the status quo for how we buy books, make payments, hail cabs, use phones, play Scrabble, and thousands of other things. Now, they…
Women are underrepresented in tech. The numbers of women in technical jobs at major tech companies speak for themselves: Twitter: 10 percent; Yahoo!: 15 percent; Facebook: 15 percent; Google: 17 percent; Microsoft:17 percent; Apple: 20 percent; Pinterest: 21 percent; and eBay: 24 percent. The problem is also apparent in compensation – a recent study found that on average, women in tech earn $6,358 less than…
Growing up I loved watching The Mary Tyler Moore Show on Nick-at-Nite. Mary Richards, the show’s protagonist, was a single woman in her early 30s working as the associate producer of a nightly news show in Minneapolis in the early 1970s. In one episode, she learns that she is making $50 less per week than the man who previously held…
If there is a bright spot to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s comments concerning women and raises last week, it is that his remarks have (re)opened a robust discussion about the real challenges women face in tackling the wage gap. For those not up to speed, at a conference billedas the largest gathering of women technologists, Nadella — now infamously— advised women against asking…
Last week, with the help of Sarah Silverman’s unique brand of irreverent humor, we were introduced to the Equal Payback Project. The goal of the project is, through a crowdfunding campaign, to raise awareness that more than 50 years since the passing of the Equal Pay Act the average American woman is still making only 78 cents to a man’s…
As I’ve noted previously on this blog, it is important for workers to understand how forced arbitration—a seemingly innocuous procedural issue—undermines their civil rights. Earlier this week I talked with Roberta Steele, Program Director at the National Employment Lawyers Association. Roberta’s work focuses on issues that prevent workers from having full and equal access to the courts. Prior to joining NELA,…
When we talk about the gender discrimination that our clients face in the workplace, we often talk in terms of leveling the playing field for women: We’re not asking employers to treat female employees better than they treat men, but we do demand – and the law requires – that they treat them equally. This analogy is uniquely fitting for…
Posted October 8th, 2014. Plaintiffs’ Attorneys, Sanford Heisler, LLP Praise Decision as Part of a Trend For more information contact: Jamie Moss, newsPRos, 201-493-1027, [email protected] Five female Merck sales representatives will proceed with their class-action gender discrimination lawsuit against Merck, according to a federal judge. The five plaintiffs, on behalf of all female sales representatives at Merck, allege that Merck…