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Last Minute Conversations About Hillary — Reaching the Unconvinced

Last week, I spent a few days knocking on doors back in my hometown of Kenosha, Wisconsin.  I was telling people about their early voting options and, where possible, engaging them in discussions about why I support Hillary Clinton for President (and Russ Feingold for WI Senate).  I was particularly surprised by the number of […]

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Female Federal Employees: Is The Government Treating Women Right?

Should the U.S. Government be the employer of choice for women looking to advance their careers? Are female federal employees better off than their corporate counterparts?  Today, the Washington Post released a study on compensation trends between men and women in various federal agencies, along with an opinion piece praising the opportunities for women in […]

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The Motherhood Penalty a.k.a Caregiver or Family Responsibilities Discrimination

In a 2007 study, Cornell sociologists Correll, Benard, and Paik examined the motherhood penalty, a phrase sociologists use to describe the systemic disadvantages that working mothers often encounter in hiring, pay, promotion, and other aspects of their employment. In the United States, mothers suffer a per-child wage penalty of approximately 5%, controlling for similar qualifications […]

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A Signal to HealthCare Providers From their Pregnant Patients’ Lawyers

The metaphor of ships passing in the night originated (at least according to Google) from a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, in a compilation called Tales of Wayside Inn. There, Longfellow laments the disconnectedness of the human condition in lines that seem equally applicable to modern life: Ships that pass in the night, and speak […]

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“Caregiverism” Feminism: A Proposal for Converting Super Humans to Mere Mortals

As the product of a single-parent household, it is not as though I am unfamiliar with the concept of a woman who puts in long hours at work while serving as the primary breadwinner.  Nonetheless, I am in awe of working professional women who are mothers.  And when it comes to the subset of these […]

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Second Child! Happy Now?

On October 29, 2015, through an announcement by its news agency Xinhua, China officially ended its decades-old one-child policy, allowing all married couples to have two children. Though the decision was widely praised by the international media as a significant step of humanity that China has undertaken, not the entire general public in China is […]

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Scandinavians See Parental Benefits Through Feminist Lens

Americans dreaming of better work-life balance often set their sights on Scandinavia, and for good reason: The region boasts some of world’s most generous parental leave policies. Sweden, for example, permits new parents to take a full year of compensated leave, split between both parents. (The policy has inspired a photo project, “Swedish Dads,” which […]

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Ensuring Caregivers’ Equal Access to Social Security

Paid family leave has been at the fore of both the Sanders and Clinton campaigns. According to their campaign websites, both Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton support creating an entitlement to at least 12 weeks of paid family leave. While paid family leave would be a tremendous step forward, it […]

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The Issues of Graduate Student Parents

My colleague, Sara, wrote last month about D.C.’s Universal Paid Leave Act, which would entitle workers to 16 weeks of paid leave for the birth of a child or another qualifying event. It’s a step in the right direction, but we’re still a long way from ensuring that working parents have all of the protections […]

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A Call to Action: D.C. Universal Paid Leave Act

The District of Columbia is on the brink of becoming the most generous place in the country to become new parents.  If the Universal Paid Leave Act of 2015 becomes law, D.C. workers will be entitled to 16 weeks of paid leave for the birth of a child or other qualifying family or medical event. […]

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