Liz Watson, Senior Counsel

Liz Watson, Senior Advisor

Liz Watson is Senior Counsel to the Education and Employment Team at the National Women’s Law Center. In her work on the Education and Employment Team, Liz uses legislative advocacy, public education and litigation to promote full and fair opportunities for women and girls in employment and job training. She also works on cross-cutting projects at the Center that advance the interests of women and girls. Before coming to the Center, Liz was Executive Director of the Georgetown Center on Poverty, Inequality and Public Policy where she led public policy initiatives focused on improving policies and programs that address the needs of low-income workers and marginalized girls and young women. Prior to that, she was legislative counsel for Workplace Flexibility 2010 at Georgetown Law, where much of her work focused on developing policy solutions to work-family conflict and its consequences for low-wage workers. She also practiced employment law at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe. Liz began her career as a Skadden Public Interest Law Fellow, working with low-wage workers and women receiving public benefits in New York City. She served as a law clerk to the Honorable Susan Y. Illston of the Northern District of California. Liz is a graduate of Georgetown University Law Center and Carleton College.

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My Take

Banishing the Wage Gap to the History Books

Posted by
Catherine Yourougou, Fellow
Liz Watson, Senior Counsel
| Posted on: June 06, 2013 at 10:55 am

In 1963, when the Equal Pay Act passed, the typical wage gap between men and women was 41 cents. Today, it stands at 23 cents. 

We've come a long way. But we still have a long way to go. Yesterday, the National Press Club was packed with folks eager to hear from a five-star group of panelists about what we need to do to finally close the gap. 

Marcia Greenberger described the worn-out stereotype that is still used to rationalize lower pay for women — that women work for "pin money" while men work to support the family. 

Joy-Ann Reid added that although the Archie Bunker world where women's "proper place" is in the home (which, she noted, was never the reality for all women other than on tv) is in some ways far behind us, women still get paid less than men in the same job based on the bizarre-o notion that simply because they're women, they are somehow worth less. 

And the wage gap is much worse for African-American and Hispanic women.

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Tags: Equal Pay, Wage Gap, Equal Pay and the Wage Gap, Employment | Add new comment

“We Don’t Pay You to Pee” and Other Reasons Why We Need the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act

Posted by
Cortelyou Kenney, Fellow
Liz Watson, Senior Counsel
| Posted on: May 14, 2013 at 02:19 pm

Amanda Roller was a call center employee in Kansas. After Amanda became pregnant she started experiencing morning sickness. Amanda’s supervisor repeatedly refused her requests to go the bathroom and instead told her that she would get Amanda a larger trash can so that she could vomit at her desk. Amanda asked again, and her supervisor again denied her request, saying, “We don’t pay you to pee.” Amanda was then demoted and eventually fired.

Unfortunately, Amanda is not alone. Across the country, pregnant women face discrimination in the workplace when their employers refuse to make adjustments to their job duties such as honoring lifting restrictions, allowing them to stay off high ladders, or even just letting them go to the bathroom to vomit.

The Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA) outlawed this type of discrimination in 1978 with its requirement that employers treat pregnant workers the same as those who are “similar in their ability or inability to work.” But too many lower courts have misinterpreted the PDA, holding incorrectly that it permits employers to provide accommodations to workers with disabilities or on-the-job injuries but deny those accommodations to pregnant workers.

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Tags: Employment, Pregnancy Discrimination Act, Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA), Pregnancy, Parenting, and the Workplace, Employment | 3 comments

If I Had A Hammer, I’d Hammer Out Occupational Segregation

Posted by Liz Watson, Senior Counsel | Posted on: April 29, 2013 at 11:36 am

When I was a teenager road constructions signs around my town read: “MEN WORKING.” I wrote our local newspaper outraged about the message that sends to women and girls: good-paying construction jobs are not jobs for women. Friends told me not to worry – those signs weren’t such a big deal. But the hard truth is that occupational segregation is very bad for women.

Those “MEN WORKING” signs remain a pretty darn accurate reflection of who actually works in construction. In fact, women made up the same measly percentage of workers in construction trades and related occupations in 2010 that they did in 1983 – 2.6%!

Throughout the labor market women are clustered in jobs that are primarily done by women, many of which pay low wages. Nearly 40% of women work in occupations that are at least 75% female, and women make up the majority of workers in the 10 largest occupations that pay under $10 an hour. According to the Institute for Women's Policy Research (IWPR), progress in the 70s and 80s toward integrating occupations stalled out in the mid-90s. 

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Tags: Employment, Women at Work, Employment | Add new comment

The Working Families Flexibility Act: Nothing But Empty Promises

Posted by
Catherine Yourougou, Fellow
Liz Watson, Senior Counsel
| Posted on: April 25, 2013 at 02:52 pm

Last week we submitted comments in opposition to The Working Families Flexibility Act, the “comp time in lieu of overtime” bill that went to the House Education and the Workforce Committee’s Subcommittee on Workforce Protections for a markup last Wednesday. And now we can’t get the song “Promises, Promises” out of our heads.



You made me promises, promises
You knew you'd never keep
Promises, promises
Why do I believe?

The Working Families Flexibility Act is filled with empty promises. Instead of providing flexibility, it would take hard-earned overtime pay out of workers’ pockets in exchange for the elusive promise of compensatory time off. While the bill’s supporters claim that there is nothing coercive about offering a comp time alternative to overtime pay, they do so against a backdrop of rampant violations of low-wage workers’ rights to overtime. In a study of low-wage workers in major cities, 76% said they worked overtime without being paid time and one-half.  It is a safe bet that enacting a comp time law would give rise to a whole new category of wage and hour abuses. 

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Tags: Employment, House of Representatives, Women at Work, Pregnancy, Parenting, and the Workplace, Employment | Add new comment

An Equal Pay Day Message You Can Dance To

Posted by Liz Watson, Senior Counsel | Posted on: April 09, 2013 at 02:33 pm

It's Equal Pay Day -- the day in the year when women's wages finally catch up to men's from the previous year. For the occasion, NWLC has released a number of new fact sheets explaining the persistent wage gap and its impact on women and families. You'll see that today women still make $.77 for every dollar the typical man makes. There are lots of reasons we need to close the wage gap. Among the most important: it's just not right. It's hard to say it better than Donna Summer in She Works Hard for the Money.

Summer wrote this song about Onetta, a bathroom attendant she met at a restaurant who worked for "little money, just tips for pay." Like Onetta, millions of women are still clustered in low-wage jobs working hard for little pay, with women making up nearly 2/3 of workers paid the minimum wage. Fair pay would make a world of difference to these women and their families.

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Tags: Employment, Equal Pay, Wage Gap, Equal Pay and the Wage Gap, Employment | Add new comment