Often employers seek to portray the employee who files a discrimination claim as self- interested, pursuing the claim out of spite or greed.  We, who do this work, know that righting discrimination is a socially-valuable undertaking because a more diverse workplace benefits employees, clients, consumers, and the business itself.  But remedying employment discrimination also has […]

I work at a law firm that did something extraordinary last month: it added a woman’s name to the door. When the firm announced this name change, I immediately recognized its significance for the female name partner.  This distinction would raise her profile and signal to those outside the firm what those of us inside […]

I read Sabrina Erdely’s article, “A Rape on Campus,” the day Rolling Stone published it online.  The account details allegations by “Jackie,” a UVA undergraduate, that a group of UVA fraternity brothers sexually assaulted her at a fraternity party.  Like most readers, I admired the author, I felt deep-seated anger at the university, and I […]

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 […]

President Obama’s announcement of executive action on immigration last week set off a chain of political chatter– “does the president have the authority?”; “how will Republicans respond?”; “what does this mean for 2016?” The politics of policy were front-and-center; the benefits of action, pushed to the periphery. So I wanted to devote this post to […]

On Saturday, The New York Times broke a story about sexual harassment at the prestigious Yale School of Medicine.  The information brought to light by NYT is shocking and troubling on two fronts. First is the nature of the allegations.  According to NYT, the former Head of Cardiology at YSOM inappropriately pursued a junior researcher […]

Last year, Google unveiled a new initiative to combat implicit bias in the workplace. The initiative has garnered widespread interest in the wake of recent disclosures by several leading tech companies, including Google, regarding the diversity (or lack thereof) of their workforces—a problem my colleague Lizzy Gropman discussed last week. The concept of implicit or […]

As I noted last week, it’s time for the tech industry to acknowledge its systemic bias against women.  Once that happens, the industry will be much more likely to do something about the problem.  Tech has proudly “disrupted” the status quo for how we buy books, make payments, hail cabs, use phones, play Scrabble, and […]

Women are underrepresented in tech. The numbers of women in technical jobs at major tech companies speak for themselves: Twitter: 10 percent; Yahoo!: 15 percent; Facebook: 15 percent; Google: 17 percent; Microsoft:17 percent; Apple: 20 percent; Pinterest: 21 percent; and eBay: 24 percent. The problem is also apparent in compensation – a recent study found that […]

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 […]