Category: Money & Jobs

Keeping Score: Spain to Offer Paid Menstrual Leave; U.S. Soccer Teams Score Pay Equity; Taliban Dissolves Human Rights Commission

In every issue of Ms., we track research on our progress in the fight for equality, catalogue can’t-miss quotes from feminist voices and keep tabs on the feminist movement’s many milestones. We’re Keeping Score online, too—in in this biweekly round-up.

This week: Spanish Cabinet approves paid sick leave for employees with menstrual pain; Lisa Cook becomes first Black woman on Federal Reserve board; baby formula shortage concerns U.S. parents; Oklahoma and Louisiana advance unprecedented abortion bans; Taliban dissolves nation’s human rights commission; American voters support upholding Roe v. Wade; America left reeling after back-to-back mass shootings; and more.

Demystifying Cybersecurity: Author Zinet Kemal Is Paving the Way for Young Immigrant Women in Cyber

It will take a paradigm shift to defend our national security moving forward. Women and people of color should be at the forefront of this effort. Demystifying Cybersecurity, a #ShareTheMicInCyber and Ms. magazine monthly series, spotlights women from the #ShareTheMicInCyber movement—highlighting the experiences of Black practitioners, driving a critical conversation on race in the cybersecurity industry, and shining a light on Black experts in their fields.

This month, cybersecurity professional and children’s book author Zinet Kemal describes her path to entering the tech industry, and why more young, Black and Muslim women should have a voice in cybersecurity.

Will My Period Tracking App Betray Me? Menstrual Surveillance in a Post-Roe World

Menstrual data and period tracking has already become a lucrative industry for apps. Selling private and personal reproductive health data to companies has created income many fertility apps.

The availability of this data already poses a unique threat to the lives of all people with uteruses, but in a world without Roe the risk of this data becoming a weapon for the anti-abortion movement. They have been known to use such data to influence decision making and reproductive choices. In order to keep this vital data out of their hands action needs to be taken to provide protection and safe alternatives for menstruators.

The Mother Tax: Working Moms Are at the Breaking Point

For each child they have, mothers get a 5 to 10 percent pay cut on average. Meanwhile fathers get a 6 percent pay bump per child.  As the primary caregiver in many households—33 percent of married working moms have identified themselves as their children’s sole care provider—many women have been forced to choose between their kids and their careers.

What will it take for employers to account for the heightened responsibilities of moms in the workplace?

Mothers Want Federally Funded Childcare. Why Are These Koch-Funded Women Opposing It?

Special interest groups funded by corporations and the ultra-wealthy went all out in attacking Build Back Better. These groups hide behind a woman’s face to conceal anti-feminist policy positions while reproducing social inequalities for families across generations by opposing policies and structures that would advance equality and improve economic mobility. 

Women Need a Win. Pass the Child Tax Credit Expansion.

When we talk about freedom of choice and bodily autonomy, we too often leave out the role economic status plays in attaining this freedom. This is particularly important for Latinx women who face the largest income gap and for Black women, who suffer the highest maternal mortality rate and historically bear the brunt of restrictive reproductive policies.

Passing the expanded child tax credit is certainly not a silver bullet solution to the seemingly endless problems women face in this country. But, it is an important step in our long and painful journey to create a country that offers equity, freedom and autonomy to all.