On April 15, thousands of workers and their allies rallied for better wages.  The Fight for $15 has expanded from a small group of fast food workers to thousands of retail employees, child care workers, home care providers, and adjunct professors. Indeed, news outlets are now reporting on how presidential campaigns will respond to the […]

We spend a lot of time on this blog talking about discrimination. Sometimes, we talk about specifically about retaliation for complaining about illegal discrimination, which is itself illegal. But I want to talk today about a subset of retaliation that we haven’t talked about much on this blog: Retaliation against whistleblowers.  Retaliation against whistleblowers is […]

With Tax Day looming, it’s easy to overlook another important mid-April date: Equal Pay Day.  Today marks the twentieth time Americans will celebrate Equal Pay Day, which was originated by the National Committee on Equal Pay as a date to raise awareness about the gender wage gap.  The date falls in April because it symbolizes […]

The media is currently saturated with news about the Ellen Pao trial (which my colleagues have written about here and here) and Rolling Stone Magazine’s journalistic errors in its November article about a gang rape at UVA. In different ways, both of these topics highlight one common problem: the unfortunate amount of weight placed on […]

My colleague Jennifer Siegel wrote about the Fast Food Forward, or Fight for $15, campaign a few months ago. The campaign calls for fast food restaurants to raise their employees’ wages to $15 an hour. At the time, Jennifer noted some of victories the movement had achieved in the form of state legislation raising minimum […]

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 […]

Have you heard of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research?  Maybe you haven’t, but I wager you’re familiar with its work.  IWPR is a leading think tank on the intersection of public policy and gender, perhaps best known for tracking the gender wage gap in our country. According to IWPR’s research, female full-time workers made […]

As my colleague Yonina wrote recently, Ellen Pao’s trial is well underway here in San Francisco. Ms. Pao, a former junior partner at the high-profile venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KCPB), is now suing KCPB for $16 million in damages as a result of the gender discrimination she alleges went unchecked at […]

Columbia University recently garnered national attention amid allegations that the University permitted a serial rapist to remain on campus and graduate.  The case is horrendous for many reasons, not least of which is the University’s response.  I want to set aside the very legitimate questions raised regarding the response as it affects the University’s undergraduate […]

There is an old adage that says we all smile in the same language. Although that’s a warm and fuzzy thought, a recent study from Northeastern University makes me hope that the intentions and attitudes behind toothy grins cannot be so easily generalized. My colleague Maya has already written about how smiling is freighted with […]