According to Rebecca Traister’s cover story for the February 22, 2016 issue of New York Magazine, single women will have a “profound effect” on this year’s general presidential election.  As a single woman, why was I not more keenly aware of this? Perhaps it is because most of the news coverage regarding presidential and mid-term […]

Bureaucracy is boring. “Regulatory Plans,” “Notice and Comment,” “Final Rules”—the Administrative State tends to glaze eyes. But for a moment last July, the media set its gaze on bureaucracy. That’s because a bureaucratic agency, the Department of Labor, proposed a rule that could increase the wages of millions of workers. Specifically, the DOL proposal makes […]

A lot has been written about why talented women aren’t advancing in academia the way their male colleagues are – including the heavy “baby penalty” paid by female academics.  But the gap we see in tenure rates between male and female faculty members can’t be explained by differences in family commitments or productivity alone.  New […]

Paid family leave has been at the fore of both the Sanders and Clinton campaigns. According to their campaign websites, both Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton support creating an entitlement to at least 12 weeks of paid family leave. While paid family leave would be a tremendous step forward, it […]

The New York Times recently published a fascinating and tragic article about a small group of women in rural India who challenged the social order of their village by seeking and obtaining jobs at a meat-processing factory. The women walked 10 miles each way (to save the 7-cent rickshaw fare) to the factory. There, they […]

The Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) is an international treaty adopted by the United States and ratified by almost every country in the world. If you have not heard of it, that may be because the United States is only one of seven countries that has failed to […]

  For every woman who’s ever questioned if she is paid less than her male colleagues, President Obama has an answer: Let’s run the numbers. According to a proposed rule, businesses with more than 100 employees will soon provide salary data to the EEOC annually, along with the more general information on workforce demographics employers […]

If you go to Chipotle’s webpage, you’ll see that in addition to providing information about its menu, catering options and other logistics issues like locations, contact information and promotions, it talks about how it provides “Food with Integrity.”  Wander into any Chipotle and you’ll see similar messages plastered onto its walls about how important it […]

At dinner with friends last night I asked, over the bread basket, what my fellow diners thought of President Obama’s speech on gun control this week. (Don’t worry, we moved on to lighter fare.  At least in terms of conversation.) Although generally well informed, three out of four said they hadn’t watched it. “I saw […]

There are several ways to get at this question. The campaign gristmills produce ample material –comments to the press, debate statements, stump speeches, tweets, YouTube videos. And, of course, with a few notable exceptions, most candidates have some legislative record. Several commentators have already sifted through this content to discern positions on pay equity (including, […]