Workplace Discrimination and Harassment

Tools of the Patriarchy: How Communication Double Standards Silence Women

PUBLISHED 9/8/2025 by

“Sorry, but—”

I paused as the words flew from my mouth, forming an apology before I could even consider why I felt the need to begin my confrontation with one. A moment earlier, my friend had interrupted me during a heated debate, and I wanted to finish making the point I had been in the middle of.

“No worries, it’s all good,” he said with a smile, continuing with his argument. I sat stunned by how in a matter of seconds, I had been interrupted, then enabled to apologize for trying to address the interruption—all with the end result of my friend getting to speak over me.

These types of interactions happen to women all the time. Compulsive apologies, interruptions, mansplaining and emotional weaponization are all barriers that get in the way of women getting their point across, and being heard.

Communicating is already complicated enough, but it is even more difficult as a woman—so let’s talk about it.

Over a Million Women Are at Risk of a Pay Cut Under a New Trump Rule

PUBLISHED 8/20/2025 by

The Trump administration’s Department of Labor recently proposed a new rule that would directly take earnings away from the more than 1.5 million home care workers in the United States, more than 80 percent women, and their families.

Between 2019 and 2040, the population of adults ages 65 and older is expected to balloon from 54 million people to nearly 81 million people, comprising an estimated 22 percent of the U.S. population. That means that the direct care workforce is projected to grow at a faster rate than any other occupation over the next decade.

‘We Have to Be Relentless’: #MeToo Champion Debra Katz Is Confident ‘There Will Be Wins’ for Survivors in the Days Ahead

PUBLISHED 8/18/2025 by

In the latest episode of Looking Back, Moving Forward, “the feared attorney of the #MeToo movement” assesses the legal landscape facing survivors—and how activists can continue to hold people in power accountable.

Listen to the latest episode of Looking Back, Moving Forward, “How Feminists are Breaking the Cycle of Gender-Based Violence and Harassment (with Ellen Sweet, Jane Caputi, Vanessa Tyson, Victoria Nourse, and Debra Katz)” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

Gender-Based Violence Is Everywhere. What Will It Take to Break the Cycle?

PUBLISHED 8/15/2025 by | UPDATED 8/18/2025 at 11:52 A.M. PT

In the fourth episode of Looking Back, Moving Forward, advocates and experts name the sociopolitical factors that fuel gender-based violence, and outline what it will take—in the courts, legislatures and our communities—to finally break the cycle.

“What does it mean that so many women, in particular, have to shoulder the burdens of violence and abuse in our day-to-day lives?”

“We’re in the middle of this terrible backlash because patriarchy does feel so threatened … It’s terrible, and it’s getting worse, but it’s because we have been so successful so far.”

Listen to the latest episode of Looking Back, Moving Forward, “How Feminists are Breaking the Cycle of Gender-Based Violence and Harassment (with Ellen Sweet, Jane Caputi, Vanessa Tyson, Victoria Nourse, and Debra Katz)” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

FX’s ‘The Bear’ Season 4 Embraces Feminist Leadership, Challenging Aggressive Masculinity and Reimagining the Workplace

PUBLISHED 8/12/2025 by

The renowned show’s newest season is carving a new, feminist path for recognition of women-led workplaces, in spite of a history of white, male dominance.

Cultural depictions of feminist leadership, even when fictional, can help us both imagine and demand better. We need not settle for egotistical, unpredictable, manipulative leaders who focus on personal gains and grievances.

‘If You’re Not Centering the People Who Are Most Impacted, Your Policy Solution Will Fall Apart’: Gaylynn Burroughs Is Fighting for Economic Justice at the Intersections

PUBLISHED 8/8/2025 by

Burroughs, the vice president of education and workplace justice at the National Women’s Law Center, connected the dots between poverty, policy and culture change in the latest episode of the Ms. Studios podcast Looking Back, Moving Forward. “Once you start seeing these problems as being problems that policy can solve,” she told me, “a whole world opens up.”

Listen to the latest episode of Looking Back, Moving Forward, “Women Can’t Afford to Wait for a Feminist Economic Future (with Premilla Nadasen, Rakeen Mabud and Lenore Palladino, Aisha Nyandoro, Gaylynn Burroughs, and Dolores Huerta)” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

Poverty Is a Policy Choice—and Women Deserve More 

PUBLISHED 8/1/2025 by

In the third episode of the Ms. Studios podcast Looking Back, Moving Forward, economists and advocates break down how our economy is leaving women behind and lay out strategies for advancing a feminist economic future.

“Poverty is the result of systems that have been intentionally put in place that the majority of us benefit from,” said Aisha Nyandoro, founding CEO of Springboard to Opportunities, home to the Magnolia Mother’s Trust guaranteed income program.

“So much of the conversation among economists and among policy people about infrastructure has always been about male-dominated infrastructure,” Lenore Palladino said. “We cannot rebuild our economy or build back better, as it were, with male-dominated sectors and not female-dominated sectors.”

“We have to continually ask: In whose interests are we fighting? Who will benefit from the work that I’m doing right now? Who should we put at the center of our organizing campaigns?” said Premilla Nadasen, labor and women’s historian.

The newest Ms. podcast, Looking Back, Moving Forward is out now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

No-Rehire Clauses Let Employers Retaliate Against Harassment Victims … Legally

PUBLISHED 7/23/2025 by and

For Charlotte Bennett, alleged harassment at the hands of former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-N.Y.) led to years of costly litigation and “extraordinary pain.” Bennett’s state-level case was finally settled in April, with a little-known clause included: If a worker settles a case accusing their employer of sexual harassment, discrimination or any form of abuse, their employer may legally include a “no-rehire” clause in the settlement. This clause bars accusers from seeking future jobs with their employer.

No-rehire clauses can also bar workers from employment with any affiliates, subsidiaries or partners of their ex-employer’s organization. If another company hires an employee, and it is later acquired by or merged with a company that employee has a no-rehire clause with, a federal court affirmed in 2023 that the worker can legally be terminated from that new job, too.

In an age of mergers and monopolies, the consequences of a no-rehire clause may follow a victim of workplace harassment forever. Depending on the size of their former employer, an ex-employee could be barred from hundreds of different companies if their settlement includes a no-rehire clause.

New York state Assemblymember Catalina Cruz (D) introduced AB 293 to fully ban such clauses across the state. If the Assembly bill and its Senate counterpart were passed, New York would join California and Vermont as the only states prohibiting or limiting these clauses.

Now Streaming: New Film ‘Lilly’ Tells Transformative Story of Equal-Pay Hero Lilly Ledbetter

PUBLISHED 7/18/2025 by

It’s tempting these dark days to dismiss the idea that any one person can make a difference. And yet, every day ordinary people fight injustice. And some days, those people persist long enough, resist long enough, that their fights rise to national prominence.

One such fight is chronicled in the new film Lilly, released in theaters this May and now available for rent. The brainchild of director Rachel Feldman, Lilly tells the story of Lilly Ledbetter, “an ordinary woman who became extraordinary,” in the words of Patricia Clarkson, who portrays her in the film.