In “Is there a legal case for work-life balance?” published last week in Fortune, Caroline Fairchild raises the theory that federal anti-discrimination laws may mandate that workplaces have work-life balance. As she correctly notes, U.S. employment laws prohibit company policies that disproportionately affect one group unless the policies have a “business necessity.”  For example, an employer […]

PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi made headlines recently, saying women still can’t have it all. The question of whether women can achieve success in both their professional and personal lives has been dissected at every angle. Some, like Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, say that women absolutely can have it all, if they simply lean in to […]

Thanks to an executive order signed by President Obama last week, employees who have suffered discrimination, harassment or sexual assault at work may have an easier time getting their day in court. Signed on July 31, the “Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces Executive Order” forbids companies who contract with the federal government from requiring their […]

Last month, Debra Harrell gave her 9-year-old daughter a cell phone and allowed her to play at a nearby park (less than a mile away from her job) for the day while she reported to work at McDonalds.  Normally, Harrell had her child accompany her to work where she sat at a table and played […]

According to research by professors at Georgia Southern University, most undergrads do not believe that discrimination will affect their careers. Ninety percent of students surveyed did not believe that women would have fewer opportunities for networking or mentoring, and 75% believed that women would not face a pay disparity. This same research found that women […]

As I scan the subway each morning on my ride to midtown, I cannot help but notice the stark differences in the way that women and men dress for work. Almost every man is in a dark suit or khakis with a light-colored button down. Women, on the other hand, tend to be dressed in […]

This post is the first segment of a two-part post on women’s attire in the workplace. Some women love them; some hate them; and some choose to bear with them. But beyond personal preference, heels have become a common and often an expected part of a woman’s professional attire. This was not necessarily true even […]

A new study from the University of Colorado-Boulder found that women and minority corporate executives who hired and promoted other women and minorities received lower performance ratings than their white male colleagues. This penalization perpetuates the glass ceiling that women and minorities struggle to shatter. The study provides one explanation for the observation that women […]

Films in the past have overwhelmingly perpetuated two paradoxical perceptions of women: the Charlie’s Angels-style seductive and naïve-yet-smart female; or the infamous Miranda Priestly’s vicious bulldog persona (from The Devil Wears Prada). Sarah Palin underscored the pervasiveness of these two stereotypes when she married them, offering the public her own self-designed portrait as a “pitbull […]

This summer, an estimated 130,000 visitors descended upon an abandoned, soon-to-be-demolished sugar factory in Williamsburg, Brooklyn to take in the latest exhibit by renowned artist-slash-provocateur Kara Walker. Housed in the historic Domino Sugar Refinery, the exhibit was titled “A Subtlety, or the Marvelous Sugar Baby: an Homage to the unpaid and overworked Artisans who have refined […]