On Saturday, The New York Times broke a story about sexual harassment at the prestigious Yale School of Medicine.  The information brought to light by NYT is shocking and troubling on two fronts. First is the nature of the allegations.  According to NYT, the former Head of Cardiology at YSOM inappropriately pursued a junior researcher […]

Last year, Google unveiled a new initiative to combat implicit bias in the workplace. The initiative has garnered widespread interest in the wake of recent disclosures by several leading tech companies, including Google, regarding the diversity (or lack thereof) of their workforces—a problem my colleague Lizzy Gropman discussed last week. The concept of implicit or […]

As one of my colleagues wrote earlier this fall, a woman should not have to choose between having a job and having a baby.  Laura Brown agrees.  With Keira McNett, Laura founded First Shift Justice Project earlier this year to protect workers in their “first shift”—their paid employment—so they can work the “second shift”—providing unpaid […]

Most women—no, all women—have had the experience of receiving unsolicited feedback on their physical appearance. Such commentary comes in many forms, from lewd remarks or demands for a “smile” on the street, to irksome discussions with well-meaning relatives about how much “prettier” one might look with a different hairstyle.  Women have long fought against these […]

As I noted last week, it’s time for the tech industry to acknowledge its systemic bias against women.  Once that happens, the industry will be much more likely to do something about the problem.  Tech has proudly “disrupted” the status quo for how we buy books, make payments, hail cabs, use phones, play Scrabble, and […]

Women are underrepresented in tech. The numbers of women in technical jobs at major tech companies speak for themselves: Twitter: 10 percent; Yahoo!: 15 percent; Facebook: 15 percent; Google: 17 percent; Microsoft:17 percent; Apple: 20 percent; Pinterest: 21 percent; and eBay: 24 percent. The problem is also apparent in compensation – a recent study found that […]

Growing up I loved watching The Mary Tyler Moore Show on Nick-at-Nite.  Mary Richards, the show’s protagonist, was a single woman in her early 30s working as the associate producer of a nightly news show in Minneapolis in the early 1970s.  In one episode, she learns that she is making $50 less per week than […]

If there is a bright spot to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s comments concerning women and raises last week, it is that his remarks have (re)opened a robust discussion about the real challenges women face in tackling the wage gap. For those not up to speed, at a conference billed as the largest gathering of women […]

Last week, with the help of Sarah Silverman’s unique brand of irreverent humor, we were introduced to the Equal Payback Project.  The goal of the project is, through a crowdfunding campaign, to raise awareness that more than 50 years since the passing of the Equal Pay Act the average American woman is still making only […]

As I’ve noted previously on this blog, it is important for workers to understand how forced arbitration—a seemingly innocuous procedural issue—undermines their civil rights. Earlier this week I talked with Roberta Steele, Program Director at the National Employment Lawyers Association.  Roberta’s work focuses on issues that prevent workers from having full and equal access to […]