Category: Money & Jobs

Girl Scout Thin Mints Are Putting Our Planet on Thin Ice

In an effort to squeeze profits from cookie sales, the Girl Scouts national headquarters has opted for cheap ingredients, cheap packaging and cheap prizes to incentivize sales. The real cost of these decisions comes at a high price—and in the end, we will all pay for the environmental damages.

The unsustainable choices of today’s Cookie Program undermine the purpose of a beloved, long-standing American custom.

Toward an Inclusive Artificial Intelligence: The Ms. Q&A With Gabriela de Queiroz

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Many people see language models, like ChatGPT and other new machine learning technologies like Meta’s Make-A-Video, as the beginning of the end. And as a woman in tech—a field dominated by men—Gabriela de Queiroz has reason to be skeptical of AI.

But when de Queiroz talks about her efforts to make artificial intelligence more inclusive, she takes a different approach to understanding the ever more influential and pervasive role of AI in contemporary societies.

Community Care Is Essential to Our Movements

Facing little to no support from outside systems like the government or other publicly funded programs, BIPOC and LGBTQ+ have developed creative ways to look out for each other and ensure the wellbeing of every member. This system, often referred to as “community care,” has also been a core tenant of the abortion access movement.

Growing up in a low-income Latinx community in Los Angeles, I witnessed firsthand what community care is really about.

Aren’t We Workers, Too?

Our work as street vendors seems invisible—and up to 2 billion workers worldwide are not recognized as workers and do not have labor rights. We are the workers of the informal economy: the street and market vendors, the hawkers, the mobile traders and the domestic- and home-based workers, many of whom are women sustaining households by themselves.

Whether in the rain or scorching heat, we sell affordable products to workers bustling to and from their jobs in urban centers, because we cannot afford not to work.

Ms. Global: Nigerian Elections; Spain Gains on Abortion and Trans Rights; Earthquake in Turkey and Syria Jeopardizes Pregnant Women

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The U.S. ranks as the 19th most dangerous country for women, 11th in maternal mortality, 30th in closing the gender pay gap, 75th in women’s political representation, and painfully lacks paid family leave and equal access to health care. But Ms. has always understood: Feminist movements around the world hold answers to some of the U.S.’s most intractable problems. Ms. Global is taking note of feminists worldwide.

This time with news from Spain, Nigeria, Kenya, Sri Lanka, Turkey and more.

‘Working 9 to 5’: A Firsthand Account of the Women’s Movement, Labor Union and Iconic Movie

Ellen Cassedy’s Working 9 to 5: A Woman’s Movement, A Labor Union, and the Iconic Movie, is part memoir, part political history and part prescriptive look at the ongoing challenges facing workers today. But as much as it acknowledges how much remains to be done to achieve racial and gender equity on the job, it also celebrates 9 to 5’s many successes.

Dads Get Paid More When They Have Kids—as Moms Earn Less

Stereotypes around parenthood are having a lasting effect on the gender pay gap, which has not budged in 20 years, according to a new study by Pew.

Men tend to increase their work hours and receive a bonus when they have children, a phenomenon known as the “fatherhood wage premium.” Women, meanwhile, experience the “motherhood penalty,” which studies have found is closely tied to conscious or subconscious bias against mothers, who may be viewed by employers as less competent or committed to the job.

Soccer Players Also Face Retirement Inequity

The U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team (USWNT) won pay equity in 2022. While that’s an amazing achievement for these young women, another inequity looms for them down the road—retirement inequity. Across the board, women retire with 30 percent less retirement income than men.

Retirement services provider TIAA has launched a campaign to highlight retirement inequity and call for pay equity across all women’s careers.

Industrial Policy Requires Care Infrastructure Investments

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The combination of the Inflation Reduction Act, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA)—all signed into law by President Biden in the past two years—will create millions of new jobs in the American economy in the months and years ahead. These new industrial policy jobs will be across energy, physical infrastructure, manufacturing, science and technology.

Building care infrastructure into industrial infrastructure is the best way to ensure that these good jobs that have been created have people to work in them. Building a care infrastructure into the new U.S. industrial policy is not only the right thing to do, but also the most strategic.