Women at Work

California just enacted the Domestic Worker Bill of Rights, joining New York and Hawaii as states that care for those who care for the vulnerable. Domestic workers are an important part of today’s work force. These workers – 95 percent of whom are women – care for the household, the children and grandparents, the sick and people with disabilities. In the words of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, they do “the work that makes all other work possible.” And yet, they are often paid very low wages, and work in difficult conditions.

After 7 years of advocacy and two vetoes, California’s domestic workers will finally receive a very important workplace protection: the right to overtime pay. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but it can be for workers who spend all day taking care of children, the elderly and the infirm. The bill of rights is estimated to cover 200,000 California housekeepers, child-care providers, and caregivers. Read more »

Today is a day for pregnant workers to celebrate. Five years ago today, the Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments Act (ADAAA) became law and restored the promise of the ADA, making the workplace much more accessible for people with disabilities.

But wait, you might be saying, pregnancy is not a disability, so how does this protect pregnant women? Here is why we are celebrating the ADAAA:

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities in employment, transportation, public accommodation, communication, and government activities and requires reasonable accommodations in the workplace. The ADAAA, signed into law on September 25, 2008, expanded the universe of disabilities that employers are required to reasonably accommodate—meaning, an employer must make an adjustment in the employee’s daily work that helps a person do his or her job. Read more »

For years, I’ve been enamored of the image of “Rosie the Riveter” – maybe it’s that we’re both redheads, but more likely it’s because she symbolize the breaking down of gender barriers, and new access for women to traditionally-male, higher-paying jobs.

That process of breaking down gender barriers is still very much in progress. Last week, the EEOC filed a lawsuit against Vamco Sheet Metals, Inc., a company that manufactures and installs sheet metal in New York. The lawsuit alleges that all of the women working on Vamco’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice construction project were fired for “pretextual reasons” – in other words, for fabricated or trumped-up charges designed to hide discriminatory sexist motive. And while Vamco has finished its work on this particular project, the EEOC is hoping to protect women who want to work on Vamco’s construction sites in the future with an injunction. Read more »

We all know it can be hard to come back to work after a long weekend. For those of you fighting for women’s equality, here are 10 reasons to roll up your sleeves on the Tuesday after Labor Day: Read more »

A new report came out from Bloomberg last week on the topic of negotiation and the gender pay gap. It caught my eye for two reasons: (1) last year I was part of a team that worked on this issue under the direction of gender and negotiation powerhouse, Dr. Linda Babcock (check out “Women Don’t Ask” for a great introduction to the topic), and, (2), shortly afterward, I failed at negotiating my own salary in real life. Less than a month after I spent my entire “Spring Break 2012” holed up in a coffee shop working on our project focused on, once again, the VERY issue of encouraging more women to negotiate, I accepted a summer position at the offered wage without missing a beat. Why didn’t I negotiate? Two main reasons are commonly identified for women not negotiating, the first is that they aren’t aware it’s an option, and the second is that they’re concerned about negatively perceived for doing so. For me it was the latter and I had good reason – a 2006 study found that when women initiate negotiations, both men and women are less likely to want to hire them. Read more »

I’m recently back from my summer vacation, and one of my favorite ways to catch up on the news is to watch the Daily Show episodes that have lined up on my Tivo.

As a young woman looking for a career after college, I know that the playing field is still far from level for women in the workplace. We’re subject to a stubborn wage gap between men and women doing equivalent jobs; persistent occupational segregation of women into low-paying jobs; an inadequate federal minimum and tipped minimum wage, which is hardest on women since we make up two-thirds of those paid the minimum wage or less; and sexual harassment. And this week I learned another troubling statistic: managers are more likely to grant higher-status male employees’ requests for flexible work schedules than they are to grant requests from equivalent female employees. Read more »

This week marks the 165th anniversary of the Seneca Falls Convention, the first women’s rights convention in U.S. history. The Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions drafted by Elizabeth Cady Stanton for the convention asserted that “all men and women are created equal” and called for legal and societal reforms reflecting that equal status, including “securing to woman an equal participation with men in the various trades, professions, and commerce” and – more radical still – granting women the right to vote.

This afternoon on Capitol Hill, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), and several other House Democrats – women and men – gathered with women’s rights advocates of today to recognize the immense progress that women have made since 1848 – as well as the work yet to be done to ensure that women have equal opportunity to support themselves and their families. To address the challenges facing women in the 21st century, they unveiled an important new initiative, “When Women Succeed, America Succeeds: An Economic Agenda for Women and Families.”

As Leader Pelosi observed in her remarks, women now make up close to half of the U.S. workforce, and more families rely on women’s income than ever before. At the same time, women represent nearly two-thirds of minimum wage workers, and the typical woman working full time, year round is paid just 77 cents for every dollar paid to her male counterpart. Workplace policies that fail to accommodate the needs of working parents and inadequate access to high-quality, affordable child care compound economic challenges for many women. Throughout their lives, women are more likely than men to experience poverty. Read more »

Thirty-five years ago the Pregnancy Discrimination Act outlawed discrimination against pregnant workers. But still today, pregnant women across the country are being fired from their jobs, forced onto unpaid leave, or made to quit when they need temporary accommodations like staying off high ladders or refraining from heavy lifting. Many women can work throughout their pregnancies without any changes to their jobs. But for some pregnant workers – particularly those in low-wage and physically demanding jobs – slight job modifications can be crucial to their ability to continue safely working during pregnancy. Despite the fact that comparable accommodations are routinely offered when employees need them because of disabilities, employers often refuse to make even simple accommodations for pregnant women. As a result, many pregnant women are prevented from continuing to work even when they are willing and able to do so. Other women stay on the job despite a lack of accommodation because they can’t afford not to, potentially jeopardizing their health and the health of their pregnancies.

Today, the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC), in tandem with A Better Balance (ABB), is releasing It Shouldn't Be A Heavy Lift: Fair Treatment for Pregnant Workers, which tells the stories of eight women who were refused the same sorts of accommodations during their pregnancy that their employers provided to other workers. As the report describes, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA) requires employers to treat pregnant workers the same as those “similar in their ability or inability to work.” So if employers make reasonable accommodations for workers with disabilities, as they must under the Americans with Disabilities Act, the PDA requires employers to provide accommodations to pregnant workers with similar limitations, too. But all too often, employers and the courts misunderstand and misinterpret these requirements.

Take the case of Peggy Young, whom the Center has written about before. Young worked as an air driver for UPS. When she became pregnant, UPS told her she had to bring a doctor’s note with her restrictions. Her doctor recommended she lift no more than 20 pounds. UPS told Young that UPS has a policy of no light duty for pregnancy – even though the company provided it to employees injured on the job, those protected by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and to others with conditions ranging from high blood pressure to sleep apnea that prevented coworkers from maintaining a commercial driver’s license. Read more »

Every time I think about why we need laws like the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, I feel sad and angry. To me, the law is just common sense: providing adjustments for pregnant workers on the job – adjustments that can be as small as a stool to sit on behind a counter, or permission to carry a water bottle on a sales floor – is usually free or cheap, helps pregnant workers continue to work and to provide for their growing families, and are good for business. The stories we hear from these pregnant workers make my heart sick from the injustice, and my brain dizzy from trying to comprehend the logic behind not providing these accommodations. After all, we offer seats on crowded trains to people who are pregnant all the time. It isn’t a heavy lift – and nor should it be for pregnant workers to get these workplace accommodations.

Yet, we hear time and again from employees who have been pushed onto unpaid leave, or terminated, just for asking for a small accommodation. Others have suffered complications in their pregnancies due to their employer’s refusal to accommodate them. For example, Hilda Guzzman’s employer refused to let her sit on a stool, which caused her to bleed and have premature labor pains. Read more »