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 […]

  For every woman who’s ever questioned if she is paid less than her male colleagues, President Obama has an answer: Let’s run the numbers. According to a proposed rule, businesses with more than 100 employees will soon provide salary data to the EEOC annually, along with the more general information on workforce demographics employers […]

In the realm of American politics and culture, California is known for leading the way on a host of issues, from the environment to the tech boom. Now the Golden State is poised to launch one of the nation’s boldest attempts to fix pay inequality between men and women. The state’s proposed Fair Pay Act, which […]

Should a feminist (married) woman accept payment from her husband for a job well done? This question set the internet hive a flutter since a piece in The New York Times detailed the so-called “wife bonuses” allegedly commonly collected by hyper-privileged women on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. According to Wednesday Martin, author of the forthcoming […]

As the Supreme Court prepares to address the constitutionality of same-sex marriage bans, the acceptance of gay marriage continues to blossom across the religious spectrum. Most notably, earlier this month the Presbyterian Church USA — the largest Presbyterian denomination in the U.S., with some 1.8 million members —adopted a definition of marriage that is more […]

Just as women are over-represented in traditionally-female fields such as teaching and childcare, they remain a scant presence in the so-called “STEM” fields of science, technology, engineering and math. According to recent U.S. census data, they make up only one-quarter of all STEM workers. Although there are many reasons for this dearth, two new studies […]

Think fast: Can you name three pictures in which the actor Jeremy Renner has appeared? I ask this question because: (1) I wonder if I am uniquely out-of-step with pop culture; and (2) Renner is at the center of a growing conversation about Hollywood’s gendered pay gap. Due to the recent Sony leaks, we learned […]

Like many children of the 1980s, I grew up on The Cosby Show. Amid the jokes and physical comedy, the show painted a legendarily wholesome portrait not only of an admirable and loving African-American family, but also of Cosby himself as a male obstetrician who loyally supported and was adored by his female patients and […]

Working mothers are rejoicing in light of a new study which shows that over the course of a career they are more productive than their childless (female) peers. After crunching the numbers on the career trajectories of academic economists, researchers working for the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis concluded that mothers outperformed women without […]

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 billed as the largest gathering of women […]