Sometimes lost in the discussion about the wage gap between male and female workers is the role of race. Though white women earn a mere 78% of what their male counterparts earn in America, the gap is far greater for women of color. African American women earn 64%, American Indian women earn 59%, Native Hawaiian […]

As you may have seen, Google’s homepage  in March featured an illustration celebrating the birth 133 years ago of Amalie (“Emmy”) Noether, a German mathematician to rival the top thinkers of her day. Referred to by Albert Einstein as the “most significant creative mathematical genius thus far produced” by intuitions educating women, Noether’s Theorem, and […]

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 […]

Recently, the California Supreme Court posthumously granted Hong Yen Chang admission to the California Bar – reversing a 125-year-old decision that denied his application because of his race and national origin. (Read the Court’s decision here; read more about the case here, here, and here.) Chang was born in China and immigrated to the United […]

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 […]

Earlier this year I coordinated a panel with the Women’s Bar Association on pregnancy discrimination.  The panel focused on a question currently pending before the Supreme Court: whether a federal pregnancy discrimination law requires employers to provide reasonable accommodations for pregnant women.  [Bloggers Note: For more information on this check out my interviews with the […]

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 […]

It’s not every day that we get to report good news for working women – especially that there is good news for working women coming from the Supreme Court.  Today is one of those days. As we’ve previously written, the Supreme Court was considering the case of Young v. UPS.   That case raised questions about […]

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 […]