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

It’s Time to Shine A Light on Compensation Data

Posted by
Liz Watson, Senior Counsel
Valarie Hogan, Fellow
| Posted on: April 09, 2013 at 12:50 pm

Oh, glorious spring! The sun is shining, the birds are singing, and all of the metaphorical references to the significance of the season begin again. It’s time to renew, revive, recharge! Unfortunately, federal efforts to collect employee compensation data more closely resemble a tree in winter: frozen and dormant; its fruit trapped in its branches.

A coalition of advocates for equal pay recently sent a letter to President Obama highlighting the problem:

[T]here currently is no mechanism for federal enforcement agencies to detect widespread wage discrimination, even when it occurs in our nation’s largest employers.

If alarm bells aren’t going off inside your brain right now, here’s why they should be:

  1. 50 years after the Equal Pay Act became law, women are still paid 77 cents for every dollar paid to a man; yet, the government does not have the basic information it needs to enforce this law;
  2.  The Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (“OFCCP”) and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) already collect data to aid in the enforcement of other civil rights laws but still do not collect information about pay; and
  3. The vast majority of Americans support federal actions that give women more tools to get fair pay in the workplace.

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

For Equal Pay Day NWLC Releases Materials Providing Fresh Insight into the Wage Gap

Posted by
Abby Lane, Fellow
Katherine Gallagher Robbins, Senior Policy Analyst
Liz Watson, Senior Counsel
| Posted on: April 04, 2013 at 10:38 am

April 9 is Equal Pay Day –the day more than three months into the year when women’s wages finally catch up to what men were paid in the previous year. In “honor” of the occasion National Women’s Law Center is releasing fresh data and analysis on the persistent wage gap between men and women.

This is also a big birthday year – something actually worth celebrating – the Equal Pay Act turns 50 in June! But on the eve of that happy occasion, here’s another downer: As reported in The Wage Gap by State for Women Overall, 50 years in, the wage gap is still going strong all across the U.S.

Since 1963, when the Equal Pay Act became law, we’ve narrowed the wage gap by only 18 cents, and in the last ten years that gap hasn’t closed at all. For the last decade, the median annual earnings of women have lagged behind men – women working full time, year round have made roughly 77 cents for every dollar made by men working full time, year round. We’ve still got a whopping 23 cents to go before we close the wage gap. Even if the wheels of progress were to start turning again today, if we only close the gap another 18 cents in the next 50 years, we’ve got 64 years before the wage gap closes.

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

“Leaning in?” Women in low-wage jobs do it every day.

Posted by Liz Watson, Senior Counsel | Posted on: February 28, 2013 at 04:17 pm

Sheryl Sandberg is telling women to “lean in.” She's encouraging us to strive for bigger and better jobs. She's telling us to resist “leaving before we leave” in anticipation of having families. Through her “lean in circles,” women will have opportunities to share success stories about how leaning in to their careers, while also having families, worked for them.

Here’s the problem: “Leaning in” any further is not an option for most low-wage working women, any more than choosing to leave their jobs is an option. They’re already leaning in, with all their might.

In families with children in the bottom 20% of the income distribution, nearly 70% of working wives are either the primary breadwinners for their families or share that responsibility equally with their husbands [PDF]. But the hourly wages that women at the bottom of the labor market earn are often simply not enough to get by – nearly two-thirds of workers earning the minimum wage are women. Many women in low-wage jobs are working more than one job to sustain their families, since they can't get enough hours at a single job to make ends meet.

Read more...
Tags: Low-Income Workers and Families, Minimum Wage, Women at Work, Minimum Wage, Pregnancy, Parenting, and the Workplace, Employment, Poverty & Income Support | Add new comment

Twelve Weeks and Twenty Years: Happy Birthday, Family and Medical Leave Act!

Posted by Liz Watson, Senior Counsel | Posted on: February 05, 2013 at 12:05 pm

On FMLA’s 20th birthday, America should celebrate this critical piece of legislation, which gave millions of workers the right to job-protected, unpaid leave. But we must also recognize how much farther we have to go in creating a workplace that takes into account the caregiving needs of the 21st century workforce.

First, the celebration: Thanks to the FMLA, millions of workers have been able to take time off from work without risking their jobs to care for a new child, for their own illness, or to care for family members who were sick. Ninety-one percent of employers report that complying with the FMLA has had either positive or neutral effects on their businesses. The positive business impacts noted by employers include reductions in employee absences, reductions in turnover, and improved morale. Eighty-five percent of employers report that complying with the FMLA is very easy, somewhat easy, or has no noticeable effect on their businesses.

The bottom line: the FMLA has been wildly successful. And now we should build on that success.

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Tags: Family Medical and Leave Act (FMLA), Employment | Add new comment

Countdown to Fair Pay

Posted by Liz Watson, Senior Counsel | Posted on: January 29, 2013 at 04:25 pm

Rocket ships are popular with the space kids who live at my house. Stomp rockets. Model rockets. Rockets made from empty paper towel rolls and popsicle sticks. No matter what type of rocket, there is always a countdown and there is always a blast off.

Today is the anniversary of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. What better time could there be to get moving on a state-of-the-art plan to rocket to fair pay? Our progress in narrowing the wage gap ground to a halt ten years ago, after two decades of steady improvement. If you're sick and tired of hearing that the typical woman is still paid 77 cents for every dollar paid to the typical man, do the 5-4-3-2-1 countdown with me of what it would take to finally close the wage gap:

5. Ensure that women have the same opportunities and encouragement as men to train for well-paying jobs, many of which are in fields in which women are currently underrepresented.

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