Regular readers of this blog are very familiar with Young v. UPS, a Supreme Court case about pregnancy discrimination.  Here at Shattering the Ceiling we are excited about the case – and about the outcome.  My colleagues have written here about why accommodating pregnant women is good for American families – and good for business and about why the […]

Spoiler alerts Fans seem to be all over the map on the Mad Men series finale. When I watched it, I was candidly a little disappointed. But reflecting on it, I think that some of that disappointment speaks to the real world. In other words, Matthew Weiner, the show’s creator, seems to have captured the […]

We spend a lot of time on this blog talking about discrimination. Sometimes, we talk about specifically about retaliation for complaining about illegal discrimination, which is itself illegal. But I want to talk today about a subset of retaliation that we haven’t talked about much on this blog: Retaliation against whistleblowers.  Retaliation against whistleblowers is […]

The media is currently saturated with news about the Ellen Pao trial (which my colleagues have written about here and here) and Rolling Stone Magazine’s journalistic errors in its November article about a gang rape at UVA. In different ways, both of these topics highlight one common problem: the unfortunate amount of weight placed on […]

Last month was big for those interested in the fight for gender equity in the workplace, as two largely publicized cases reached important turning points. On Wednesday, March 25, 2015, the United States Supreme Court ruled in favor of Peggy Young in her pregnancy discrimination case against her employer, UPS.  On Friday, March 27, 2015, […]

As the Supreme Court prepares to address the constitutionality of same-sex marriage bans, the acceptance of gay marriage continues to blossom across the religious spectrum. Most notably, earlier this month the Presbyterian Church USA — the largest Presbyterian denomination in the U.S., with some 1.8 million members —adopted a definition of marriage that is more […]

Earlier this year I coordinated a panel with the Women’s Bar Association on pregnancy discrimination.  The panel focused on a question currently pending before the Supreme Court: whether a federal pregnancy discrimination law requires employers to provide reasonable accommodations for pregnant women.  [Bloggers Note: For more information on this check out my interviews with the […]

As my colleague Yonina wrote recently, Ellen Pao’s trial is well underway here in San Francisco. Ms. Pao, a former junior partner at the high-profile venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KCPB), is now suing KCPB for $16 million in damages as a result of the gender discrimination she alleges went unchecked at […]

In the midst of the Ellen Pao trial, much chatter has erupted on gender politics in the tech industry. Ellen Pao, a former junior partner at the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, is suing her former employer for gender discrimination. Among Ms. Pao’s claims is an allegation that Kliener failed to promote her to top […]

In a belated celebration of Valentine’s Day, I want to tell a love story. But don’t worry, this won’t get mawkish. This is a story of modern love, of commercial love, of a four-letter (sometimes, three-letter) slogan (“love” or “LUV”) perverted to discriminatory ends. (This also an aviation tale, and if you haven’t read my […]