April is the month every year when the paychecks of women working full-time, year-round catch up with what men earned by the previous December 31. This year Equal Pay Day falls on April 17. There are a number of causes for the pay gap, including job segregation (so-called “men’s jobs” pay more than “women’s jobs”) [...]
It might seem a bad time to repeal equal pay laws when women who graduate college earn $1.2 million less during their lifetimes than their male peers. It might also seem ill-conceived to replace effective sex education with abstinence-only programs while making abortion restrictions tighter. But Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has never been a master [...]
“Women who want to earn more on Wall Street than their male colleagues have one reliable option. They can set up a shoe-shine stand in Lower Manhattan.” So concluded Bloomberg reporter Frank Bass after crunching Census data on the gender wage gap in various professions. His findings: Out of 265 major occupations, service work such [...]
Twenty students at the University of Virginia are starving, but not only because they haven’t eaten in 10 days. They’re starved for justice from an administration they say has failed to provide a living wage for its employees, and so they began a hunger strike on February 18. Their demands: Pay UVA workers more–at least [...]
Next time you plunk down some change on the table before leaving a restaurant, think about what might be behind that service with a smile. A new study warns that when Americans eat out, they feed into an industry fueled by exploitation and rampant discrimination against women. The report, published by the labor advocacy group [...]
“Work It,” an ABC sitcom about two unemployed buddies (a car salesman and a mechanic), who dress in drag in order to land jobs as pharmaceutical sales reps, premiered on Tuesday night. According the the official ABC blurb, the main characters are victims of “the man-cession:” Lee Standish is a quick-witted and likable family man. [...]
Nearly 2 million Americans will see their unemployment benefits expire in January if Congress doesn’t act to renew them. Some 430,000 of these workers lost their jobs as recently as July. An extension of benefits is a basic necessity for a country in the midst of a crisis of long-term unemployment: Rates have not been [...]
Middle-class black Americans are among those hardest hit by the recession, in part because they were more likely to be employed in public sector jobs, the New York Times reported on Tuesday: Though the recession and continuing economic downturn have been devastating to the American middle class as a whole, the two and a half [...]
On Wednesday a new poll [PDF] was released that shows that people who are most likely to need paid family leave are least likely to be aware of programs that provide it. Specifically, California registered voters were surveyed to assess their awareness of the state’s groundbreaking Paid Family Leave Act, passed nearly 10 years ago. [...]
A new Census Bureau report shows that, from 2001-2008, the percentage of first-time mothers receiving paid leave before and after childbirth leveled off at a mere 50 percent. As usual, the most vulnerable women–low-income women, women of color, young women and less-educated women–had the least access to paid leave. By the numbers: 50.8 percent: From [...]
