Gender and the Law Blog

New Study Shows that Even With Tenure Women are More Likely to Leave Higher Ed

Chronicle, Even With Tenure, Women Are More Likely to Leave Higher Ed

Across academe, women are more likely to leave their faculty positions than men, and attrition is highest for women who have tenure or work in fields outside of science, technology, engineering, and math, according to a new study.

And even when men and women leave at the same rate, their reasons for doing so are gendered: Early-career women are more likely to leave due to issues with work-life balance, while women later in their careers are more likely to leave because of a hostile work environment. Men tend to cite professional reasons, such as a lack of resources or support.***

Women were more likely to leave their faculty roles than men at every career stage, and the gap grew wider at the top of the ladder. At the assistant-professor level, women were 6 percent more likely to leave than men. Among full professors, that figure was 19 percent.

Tenured faculty leaving at the highest rate is surprising, Raj said. But she speculated that women with tenure might be able to transition into other careers more easily than their less-experienced colleagues if the environment drives them out.

Women at less prestigious institutions were also more likely to quit.

Women most often cited issues with workplace climate as their reasons for leaving, such as harassment, dysfunctional department leadership, and feelings of not belonging. Men most often recounted professional reasons for leaving, such as difficulty obtaining funding or poor administrative support.

Previously, research has shown that one of the biggest drivers of inequity between women and men on the faculty is responsibilities at home. Additionally, Raj has observed gender gaps in sponsorship from more senior academics and in service work such as mentoring students.

Study, Science Advances, Gender and Retention Patterns Among US Faculty

Women remain underrepresented among faculty in nearly all academic fields. Using a census of 245,270 tenure-track and tenured professors at United States–based PhD-granting departments, we show that women leave academia overall at higher rates than men at every career age, in large part because of strongly gendered attrition at lower-prestige institutions, in non-STEM fields, and among tenured faculty. A large-scale survey of the same faculty indicates that the reasons faculty leave are gendered, even for institutions, fields, and career ages in which retention rates are not. Women are more likely than men to feel pushed from their jobs and less likely to feel pulled toward better opportunities, and women leave or consider leaving because of workplace climate more often than work-life balance. These results quantify the systemic nature of gendered faculty retention; contextualize its relationship with career age, institutional prestige, and field; and highlight the importance of understanding the gendered reasons for attrition rather than focusing on rates alone.

Women in Iceland Go on Strike Against Gender Inequality

NYT, Women in Iceland Go on Strike Against Gender Inequality

Tens of thousands of women and nonbinary people in Iceland were expected to join a one-day strike on Tuesday, which organizers called the country’s largest effort to protest workplace inequality in nearly five decades.

Iceland is a global leader in gender equality but still has a long way to go, said Freyja Steingrímsdóttir, a spokeswoman for the Icelandic Federation of Public Workers, the country’s largest federation of public worker unions.

“Iceland is often viewed as some sort of equality paradise,” Ms. Steingrímsdóttir, an organizer of the strike, said. “If we’re going to live up to that name, we need to move forward and really be the best we can be — and we’re not stopping until full gender equality is reached.”

Organizers urged women and nonbinary people to stop all work on Tuesday, including household errands and child care. Even Prime Minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir said she would take part, telling local news media that she would not call a cabinet meeting and that she expected other women in the cabinet to strike.

Nobel Prize in Economics Awarded to Claudia Goldin for Work on the Gender Pay Gap

The Nobel Prize explains the relevance of her research:

Historically, much of the gender gap in earnings could be explained by differences in education and occupational choices. However, this year’s economic sciences laureate Claudia Goldin has shown that the bulk of this earnings difference is now between men and women in the same occupation, and that it largely arises with the birth of the first child. 

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By trawling through the archives and compiling and correcting historical data, this year’s economic sciences laureate Claudia Goldin has been able to present new and often surprising facts. She has also given us a deeper understanding of the factors that affect women’s opportunities in the labour market and how much their work has been in demand. The fact that women’s choices have often been, and remain, limited by marriage and responsibility for the home and family is at the heart of her analyses and explanatory models. Goldin’s studies have also taught us that change takes time, because choices that affect entire careers are based on expectations that may later prove to be false. Her insights reach far outside the borders of the US and similar patterns have been observed in many other countries. Her research brings us a better understanding of the labour markets of yesterday, today and tomorrow.

UChicago Alum Claudia Goldin Wins Nobel Prize for Research on Gender and Labor

        Detailing Goldin's work and books.

Podcast, Claudia Goldin: Why do Women Still Make Less Than Men?, Harvard Magazine.

 

Exploring the Pay Gap in Large Law Firms and the Role of High-Profile Litigation in Facilitating Pay Equity

Rachel S. Arnow-Richman, Beyond the Glass Ceiling: Panes of Equity Partnership, Fla. Int'l U. L. Rev. (2023 Forthcoming)

This Article, prepared for a “micro-symposium” on Professor Kerri Stone’s monograph Panes of the Glass Ceiling (2022), explores the partnership pay gap in large law firms and the role of high-profile litigation in facilitating pay equity. There is a rich literature and extensive data on the gender attainment gap in elite law practice, particularly with regard to women’s attrition from practice and poor representation within the partnership ranks. Less attention has been paid to the way in which the exceptional women who achieve equity partner status continue to lag behind their male peers. This Article explores “Women v. BigLaw,” a cluster of equal pay cases brought by women partners late 2010s against elite firms. Using Stone’s work as a lens, it reveals how the same unspoken beliefs that underlie the law firm glass ceiling operate above it, placing women partners at the bottom of a new compensation hierarchy centered on origination credit. Due to historical allocations, a culture of deference toward male rainmakers, and implicitly biased attorney development and evaluation practices, origination operates as a form of “legacy credit” that locks in preexisting entitlements favoring male partners. Despite this, gender equity in law practice has been framed principally as a professional value, not a legal imperative. Women v. BigLaw and the unprecedented use of the court system by women lawyers reveals, however, that partnership pay practices pose a liability risk to firms. This new reality may incent structural change in ways that attention to gender equity as a managerial and professional goal could not.

Lawsuit Challenges U.S. Dept. of Veteran's Affairs' Policy Limiting Access to IVF

The National Organization for Women is suing the United States Department of Veteran's Affairs over its policy limiting access to in vitro fertilization to only opposite-sex and married couples. For news coverage of the lawsuit, check out 19th News here.  The complaint alleges that the existing policy requires as follows:

6. Veterans and service members seeking coverage of IVF treatments must, together with a spouse, be able to provide their own sperm and eggs and are prohibited from using gametes from third parties (“Member Gamete Requirements”). Defendants’ policy also limits the benefit to service members and veterans who are lawfully married (“Marriage Requirements”).

 

7. Additionally, no matter how much an active-duty service member struggles with fertility, only active-duty service members with a “serious or severe” illness or injury from service can access IVF. Similarly, only veterans with infertility diagnosed as “service-connected” can receive IVF from VHA (“Service-Connection Requirements”).

 

8. The IVF policies facially exclude service members who are a) single or in an unmarried couple; b) unable to use their own eggs or sperm because of illness or injury; c) in a same-sex couple or couple with the same reproductive organs; or d) lacking a service-connected disability or Category II or III illness causing infertility.

 

The complaint alleges that this policy is discriminatory and it seeks injunctive and declaratory relief: 

9. By excluding service members and veterans from IVF coverage on the basis of sex, sexual orientation, marital status, and/or the cause of their infertility, Defendants’ discriminatory policies violate Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act, the due process and equal protection guarantees of the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution, and the Administrative Procedure Act.

 

* * *  

 

11. NOW-NYC seeks injunctive and declaratory relief on behalf of itself and its members enjoining Defendants from enforcing the discriminatory eligibility provisions of their IVF policies and declaring those provisions unlawful, so that no service member or veteran is denied the care they need to start a family solely because of who they love, their choice whether or not to marry, or the precise source of their fertility challenges. Specifically, NOW-NYC asks that this court declare unlawful and permanently enjoin Defendants from enforcing the Marriage Requirements, the Member Gamete Requirements, and the Service-Connection Requirements (collectively, the “Discriminatory Provisions”).

 

The full complaint is available here. 

 

The Empirical Evidence for a New Approach to Regulating Sexual Harassment

Jennifer Ann Drobac & Mark Russell, Unmasking Sexual Harassment: The Empirical Evidence for a New Approach, 17 N.Y.U. J.L. & BUS. 315-390 (2021)

If moral outrage were enough, 50 years of antidiscrimination law and two full years of #MeToo should have led to the rapid remediation and elimination of sexual harassment by corporate decisionmakers. However, moral condemnation apparently is not enough, so this Article urges a multifaceted approach that combines (to start) research, financial analysis, disclosure, preventative cultural change, and remediation (if still needed). Through disclosure, it suggests a tactic that combines the goals of social entrepreneurship and profit maximization. Estimates suggest that sexual harassment costs U.S. business millions, if not billions, annually. However, most stock exchange-listed companies avoid financial disclosure or other reporting of sexual harassment claims. The onus for the invocation of Title VII and other antidiscrimination protections falls upon the victims and targets of abuse. Our research and empirical evidence demonstrate that corporations need to make changes to improve the proverbial bottom line. The disclosures that companies do make lack useful information for users of financial reports. Further, a high number of perpetrators of corporate sexual harassment are those with power—key executives and Chief Executive Officers (CEOs). Further, a number of non-disclosures of sexual harassment indicate poor management and culture at companies. Our results are consistent with companies that use arbitration and non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) to conceal sexual harassment. Our research supports a new SEC reporting requirement for all publicly traded companies (and a best practices approach for all organizations). Arguably, corporations would save much more by getting ahead of sexual harassment cases, disclosing problems, and avoiding expensive Title VII and shareholder derivative lawsuits. The evidence and common sense call for additional prophylactic action.

Women's Weak Language is a Source of Strength

Adam Grant, Op Ed, NYT, Women Know Exactly What They're Doing When They Use "Weak Language."

“Stop using weak language.” If you’re a woman, you’ve probably gotten this advice from a mentor, a coach or a teacher. If you want to be heard, use more forceful language. If you want a raise or a promotion, demand it. As the saying goes, nice girls don’t get the corner office.

This advice may be well intentioned, but it’s misguided. Disclaimers (I might be wrong, but …), hedges (maybe, sort of), and tag questions (don’t you think?) can be a strategic advantage. So-called weak language is an unappreciated source of strength. Understanding why can explain a lot about the way women acquire power and influence — and how men do, too.

It turns out that women who use weak language when they ask for raises are more likely to get them. In one experiment, experienced managers watched videos of people negotiating for higher pay and weighed in on whether the request should be granted. The participants were more willing to support a salary bump for women — and said they would be more eager to work with them — if the request sounded tentative: “I don’t know how typical it is for people at my level to negotiate,” they said, following a script, “but I’m hopeful you’ll see my skill at negotiating as something important that I bring to the job.” By using a disclaimer (“I don’t know …”) and a hedge “(I hope …”), the women reinforced the supervisor’s authority and avoided the impression of arrogance. For the men who asked for a raise, however, weak language neither helped nor hurt. No one was fazed if they just came out and demanded more money.

In 29 studies, women in a variety of situations had a tendency to use more “tentative language” than men. But that language doesn’t reflect a lack of assertiveness or conviction. Rather, it’s a way to convey interpersonal sensitivity — interest in other people’s perspectives — and that’s why it’s powerful.***

New evidence reveals that it’s not ambition per se that women are being penalized for. In fact, women who are perceived as intelligent and capable, determined and achievement-oriented, independent and self-reliant are seen as more promotable to leadership positions.

The problem arises if people perceive them to be forceful, controlling, commanding and outspoken. These are qualities for which men are regularly given a pass, but they put women at risk of being disliked and denied for leadership roles

On 75th Anniversary of Women's Armed Services Integration Act Recalling Black Women's Military Leadership Since the Civil War

Wash Post, Black Women's Leadership in the Military Dates to the Civil War

This month marks 75 years since passage of the groundbreaking Women’s Armed Services Integration Act, which permitted women to serve as full members of the U.S. armed forces in every branch. It also marks a decade since the Pentagon reversed its “ground combat exclusion policy.” That had allowed women to serve on combat ships, even though it banned them from serving in direct ground combat.

These changes have been monumental. While women represented just 2 percent of the U.S. military in 1948, they currently constitute roughly 18 percent of the armed forces. Yet a 2020 report shows that fewer than 1 percent of deployed active-duty combat troops are women. A fraction of them are African American women.

While the need to recognize and celebrate these historic milestones is paramount, these commemorations often forget that Black women led armies and fought behind enemy lines during the Civil War — long before President Harry S. Truman signed the historic legislation in 1948. Their military achievements have regularly been erased, eclipsed or distorted in service of building a national narrative that appealed to White Americans. Restoring this history to our understanding of the history of women’s role in the military helps us envision a national narrative that is both closer to the truth and that works for us all.

Goldman Sachs to Pay $215 Million to Settle Gender Bias Suit of Hindering Women's Career Advancement and Paying Them Less Than Male Colleagues

Goldman Sachs to Pay $215M to Settle Gender Bias Suit

Goldman Sachs said on Monday that it would pay $215 million to settle a lawsuit that accused the bank of systematically discriminating against thousands of female employees. The money will be divided among about 2,800 women, and the bank agreed to change some of its practices.

The individual payout amount itself is less than it might appear: Subtracting legal fees, it comes to roughly $47,000 per plaintiff. Still, the settlement is the latest effort to make Wall Street address what critics say are years of unequal and unfair treatment of female workers.

The lawsuit accused Goldman of hindering women’s career advancement and paying them less than their male colleagues. It took particular aim at the firm’s performance review process, which they said favored men, setting them up for promotions and higher pay.

Balancing Private and Public Interests in the Disclosure of Sexual Harassment Information

Gregory Mitchell, Balancing Private and Public Interests in the Disclosure of Sexual Harassment Information, Georgetown J. Legal Ethics (forthcoming)

Legal ethicists, advocacy groups, and politicians have called for greater restrictions on the use of nondisclosure agreements (NDAs) when parties resolve sexual assault and sexual harassment claims, and recently broad bans on the use of NDAs have been put in place. However, as shown by the original empirical research reported here, most members of the public see nondisclosure as appropriate in some cases and do not oppose bargaining over privacy. A large-scale survey found that public concern about NDAs depended on a variety of factors, including the level of compensation paid to the claimant to settle a matter, whether both parties had counsel, and whether the NDA contained an exception allowing disclosure if the accused harasses again. Furthermore, most respondents believed that the disclosure of information should be determined on a case-by-case basis, even where the alleged behavior was quite serious. NDA reforms that preserve the right of parties to bargain over privacy but condition that privacy on the accused’s good behavior would better balance private and public interests in sexual harassment information than reforms that bar any use of NDAs

Ninth Circuit Says Playing Offensive Music of Gender Violence in the Workplace Can Constitute a Hostile Environment

Wash Post, Court Says Playing Offensive Music Can Constitute Workplace Harassment 

Inside a Nevada clothing warehouse, a song describing a woman’s murder blasted from commercial-strength speakers, as did other musical selections glorifying abuse and denigrating women, a lawsuit alleged.

The rap music would often overpower the 700,000-square-foot S&S Activewear facility in Reno — and helped foster an environment rife with discrimination and harassment, according to the suit, which was filed in 2020 by eight former employees, including seven women and one man.

That lawsuit was initially tossed out in December 2021 by a lower court, which argued that, since the music offended both men and women, it “did not constitute discrimination because of sex.” Last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit rejected that notion — ruling that “an employer cannot find safe haven by embracing intolerable, harassing conduct that pervades the workplace,” Judge M. Margaret McKeown wrote in a court opinion.***

According to the lawsuit, the blaring music was “inescapable” inside the Reno warehouse, where at least five speakers were often driven around on forklifts. The employees alleged that they were subjected to songs by Eminem and Too Short that they said glorified violence against women, for instance describing a young girl dying after a graphic instance of sexual violence.***

But it wasn’t just the music that was offensive, the suit alleged — it was also the behavior it inspired in male employees, who allegedly shared pornographic videos, made sexual remarks, yelled obscenities and pantomimed sexual intercourse while the songs played.

Szalai on "#MeToo’s Landmark, Yet Flawed, Impact on Dispute Resolution"

Imre S. Szalai has published #MeToo’s Landmark, Yet Flawed, Impact on Dispute Resolution: The Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act of 2021 in 18 NW. J. L. & Soc. Pol'y. 1 (2023). The abstract previews: 

On March 3, 2022, President Joe Biden signed the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act of 2021 (the Amendment) into law. This Amendment is the most significant change in the last several decades to the Federal Arbitration Act (the FAA), the main federal law governing arbitration since 1925. This landmark Amendment is also the most important federal legislation to arise thus far from the #MeToo movement. The Amendment invalidates predispute arbitration agreements in cases involving sexual harassment or sexual assault, thereby allowing survivors to proceed with their claims in public court with more robust procedural protections. With hundreds of millions of arbitration agreements in place covering consumers and workers, the Amendment can impact access to justice and shape how disputes are resolved.

 

While the goals of the Amendment are laudable, the Amendment suffers from several problems, including poor drafting that leads to at least three different interpretations of its scope. These ambiguities particularly arise when a survivor asserts a sexual harassment claim in addition to other types of claims. Furthermore, it is uncertain whether the Amendment applies in a labor setting with a collective bargaining agreement. The Amendment may also be unconstitutional as applied in certain settings involving state courts and state tort claims. Additionally, the Amendment raises deeper questions about the regulation of arbitration and proper role of arbitration in society. This Article clarifies some of the confusion regarding the Amendment by proposing a particular interpretation of the Amendment’s scope: the Amendment should be construed to cover all claims that have a nexus with a sexual assault or sexual harassment claim. The justifications for the Amendment also suggest that future reforms of arbitration law should address discrimination and other forms of harassment. 

Menstruation and the Law in a Post-Dobbs World

Emily Gold Waldman & Bridget J. Crawford, Menstruation in a Post- Dobbs World, 98 NYU Law Review Online 191 (2023)

In this Essay, we re-examine our 2022 book, Menstruation Matters: Challenging the Law’s Silence on Periods, through multiple related lenses, including the human rights, sustainability, and workplace issues emphasized by our three reviewers; the COVID-19 pandemic; and the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. All of these perspectives converge on the inherent dignity and autonomy interests in being able to manage one’s own body. Menstruation and related conditions like breastfeeding, pregnancy, and menopause should not be sources of shame or stigma. Nor should they be vectors of formal control by the government or de facto exclusion from school, work, or any aspect of public life. Yet the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade means that reproduction-associated bodily processes likely will be the focus of legal battles for years to come. As we continue to emphasize the many ways that menstruation matters in life and law, we strive for a legal future that recognizes the full humanity of all people and safeguards our equal rights

CFP 2024 AALS Obstacles to Gender Equality in the Legal Academy

Call for Proposals for 2024 AALS WILE Main Program:    "Obstacles to Gender Equality in the Legal Academy"   Panel Description:     Despite the progress made in recent years, gender inequality remains a pervasive issue in the legal profession, particularly in academia. Women remain underrepresented in influential positions, and face systemic bias, discrimination, harassment, and other obstacles that limit their advancement and overall success. Law schools place a premium on statuses that have largely been defined by and through patriarchies. Visible and invisible status lines and distinctions are perpetuated by a legal academy that voices an often-empty commitment to equity.  We invite proposals for the 2024 AALS WILE Main Program, dedicated to exploring the obstacles that face a diversity of women in the legal academy. We welcome proposals that address, but are not limited to, the following themes:  The impact of implicit bias and gender stereotypes on hiring, promotion, and tenure decisions in law schools.   The impact on career advancement and earning potential (or "motherhood tax") for professional women due to parenting and/or caretaking responsibilities.   The role of institutional policies and practices in perpetuating inequality, such as implicit curricula, exclusionary practices, and lack of support for work-life balance.  The experiences of women of color, LGBTQ2S+ women, women with disabilities, and other marginalized groups in the legal academy.  The effect of gender disparities on teaching, research, and service activities.  The potential of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives to foster a more equitable academic environment.  The implications of gender inequality for legal education, scholarship, and the legal profession at large.  The ways in which laws attacking tenure and prohibiting DEI trainings/offices will perpetuate gender inequality.    We welcome submissions from law faculty, staff, and administrators at all stages of their careers. Submissions are due on or before Monday July 31, 2023, and should be sent to [email protected]. For more information, please do not hesitate to contact Victoria Haneman.

Backdating the Law of MeToo and Sexual Harassment

Jessica Fink, Backdating #MeToo, SSRN.com 

The #MeToo movement radically altered the way that people think about workplace sexual harassment. For decades, women were expected to tolerate a broad range of sexualized conduct at work. However, the revelation of Harvey Weinstein’s misdeeds in late 2017, followed by the exposure of countless other bad actors, dramatically shifted the social narrative regarding appropriate workplace behavior. Conduct that employees once ignored or overlooked suddenly became the basis for vociferous objection; the perfunctory responses to harassment that many employers once adopted suddenly stood out as glaringly deficient.

While society has undergone great shifts in its understanding of and response to workplace harassment, the courts have been slow to respond to these changing views. Various academics and other commentators have argued that sexual harassment law must evolve to catch up to these social changes, but few courts have embraced (or even acknowledged) this new reality. More importantly, virtually no one has addressed how courts should treat cases that span the progression of these norm shifts – cases that may have arisen prior to the upheaval caused by the #MeToo movement, but which are being litigated in the aftermath of these new social standards. This seems particularly striking given the extent to which the legal framework for resolving harassment claims explicitly involves an understanding of broader norms: In an area of the law that turns so significantly on “reasonableness” – whether a “reasonable” plaintiff would have perceived a sexually hostile environment; how a “reasonable” employer or employee should respond in such circumstances – what happens when reasonableness becomes a moving target, even within the duration of a single case?

This article examines the extent to which current, more stringent social standards regarding workplace sexual harassment should be applied retroactively to cases that may have arisen before those standards came into being. Specifically, it examines what should happen when a court is faced with workplace behavior that would not have constituted actionable harassment at the time that such conduct occurred, but which likely would create liability for the employer under today’s expectations. Should courts “backdate” the new norms created by the #MeToo movement? This article discusses the ramifications for women – and for society at large – of engaging in such a retroactive application of these evolving standards.

Analyzing the Privatization of Family Leave Through Insurance

Deborah A. Widiss, Privatizing Family Leave Policy: Assessing the New Opt-in Insurance Model, Seton Hall L. Review (forthcoming)

Federal law fails to guarantee new parents or family caregivers paid time off from work. A growing number of blue-leaning states have addressed this gap by enacting comprehensive, paid family and medical leave laws, typically funded by a small payroll tax. A new—and quite different—approach is expanding rapidly in red-leaning states: authorization of commercial “Family Leave Insurance” to be marketed to employers. In other words, this is an opt-in privatized approach to family leave policy.

This Article, written for a symposium held by the Seton Hall Law Review, offers the first analysis in the legal literature of opt-in Family Leave Insurance laws. These laws anticipate that insurance companies will likely add “family leave” to group short-term disability policies (an existing insurance product that provides partial salary reimbursement to employees who take time off work for medical needs). However, only about 40% of American workers, and just 22% of low-wage workers, receive short-term disability benefits from their employers—and most policies replace only 50-60% of regular wages. Providing paid leave at the low reimbursement rate typical of short-term disability policies can actually exacerbate inequality by making it easier for relatively affluent workers to take extended time off but still failing to provide sufficient support for low-wage workers to do so. By contrast, states that have enacted comprehensive paid leave laws, funded by a payroll tax, typically cover virtually all workers, and most replace 80-95% of regular wages, up to a cap set around the median wage.

This Article analyzes the new privatized Family Leave Insurance model, then suggests provisions that would help opt-in policies actually meet the needs of new parents and family caregivers. These include specifying a reasonably ample period of benefits and level of wage replacement, and ensuring that definitions of “family” reflect the diversity of contemporary families. The Article also explores potential adverse selection challenges—both within workplaces and across workplaces—that may arise under an opt-in approach. Because the risk pool will almost certainly be less varied than under a public program, private Family Leave Insurance may well provide less generous benefits at a higher per-person cost than fully-public policies. Authorization of opt-in insurance is better than nothing, but, as this Article demonstrates, it is likely that both workers and businesses are better served by comprehensive paid leave laws.

Book Review: Queer Career--Sexuality and Work in Modern America

Guardian, "Work is About Belonging": LGBTQ+ People's History in the Workplace

In a new book, historian Margot Canaday studies the neglected history of queer people in American workplaces

There has been scant attention paid to queer people in the workplace, argues historian Margot Canaday in her fascinating new book Queer Career: Sexuality and Work in Modern America. “Queer people are one of the largest, but least studied, minority groups in the workforce,” Canaday said while speaking to the Guardian about her book.

According to her book, straight historians have tended to ignore the experiences of LGBTQ+ people in the workplace and queer researchers have focused on other aspects of community life, assuming that workplaces were uninteresting, because they weren’t places where LGBTQ+ were able to reveal their true identities. “There has been an assumption that the workplace has been a straight place that was not so revelatory for historians,” Canaday told me.

Canaday’s belief is that the conventional wisdom is wrong – in fact, the history of queer identities in the workplace has been much more complex and fascinating than previously assumed. “I think for all of us – queer or straight – work is about belonging and identity,” Canaday said. “But there are also things that are unique about work for queer people. For instance, it was a way gay people found other gay people. Or for folks who are gender non-conforming, there’s a way that work affirms that isn’t available anywhere else.”

Working off her hunch, as well as a desire to write a queer history that did not marginalize women, Canaday got to work interviewing queer-identified people who had participated in the labor force as far back as the 1950s.

N.Y. Department of Labor Releases Report on the Gender Pay Gap in the Pandemic Era

The New York Department of Labor released a report titled The Gender Pay Gap in the Pandemic Era. The Executive Summary states: 

Women in New York earned 88.2 cents for every dollar earned by men in 2021, a significantly smaller gap than the national average of 81.5 cents. The gender pay gap continues to be substantially larger for women of color compared to non-Hispanic White men in New York and nationally. Black or African American women in New York were paid 67.8 cents on the dollar while Hispanic and Latina women were paid only 62.9 cents on the dollar.

The gender pay gap in New York narrowed between 2019 and 2021, despite the challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the pandemic-induced economic recession had a major impact on women in the labor force. From 2019 to 2021, the unemployment rate for women nearly doubled from 4.2% to 8.2%. In 2021, over 405,000 women were unemployed, a significant increase from 207,000 in 2019.

Women earn less than men at every wage level and across most industries and occupations. Moreover, low-wage, gender-segregated occupations, such as child care, are dominated by women, who comprise 90% of that industry’s workforce. Women also encounter a “motherhood penalty” since they are more likely to temporarily exit the workforce or work part-time to raise children. This reduction in earnings can have significant long-term financial implications.

Although there has been improvement in the gender wage gap over time, economic inequality persists. Women’s work is still undervalued, underpaid, and unpaid.

The report includes various policy recommendations. 

Sexual Harassment Reconceived as Misappropriation and Waste of Corporate Human and Financial Assets

Jennifer Ann Drobac, The Misappropriation, Embezzlement, Theft, and Waste of Corporate Human and Financial Assets: Sexual Harassment Reconceived, 36 ABA J. LAB. & EMP. L. 425-477 (2022).

This article suggests how sexual harassment should be treated by companies as a civil misappropriation, embezzlement, conversion, or theft—as well as a civil rights violation. Additionally, some payment associated with sex-based harassment should be considered corporate waste. The misappropriation approach considers not only how sex-based harassment constitutes a civil misappropriation, embezzlement, conversion, or theft, but it also responds to three anticipated objections to sexual harassment as a civil misappropriation: (1) sexual harassment is a minor corporate expense; (2) identification of sexual harassment as civil misappropriation of corporate human assets commodifies targets; and (3) this new concept will change neither corporate responses nor corporate cultures. First, in response, sexual harassment is not a minor expense but one that costs companies billions of dollars annually. It is, therefore, in a company’s financial interest to treat the problem as a theft of valuable assets. Second, only corporate failure to recognize the market value of female professional talent dehumanizes people. Almost all human beings engage in work, and men, in particular, are valued for their work. Thus, the misappropriation solution puts targets on the same plane as privileged men, valued for their market productivity (as opposed to sexual or reproductive utility). Third, the identification of sexual harassment as a theft, conversion, embezzlement, or misappropriation, as well as a civil rights violation, encourages companies to modify and improve their remedial responses, corporate culture, profitability, and transparency. By making corporations and harassment targets as potential allies, instead of adversaries, the reconception of sex-based harassment as a misappropriation of corporate human assets incentivizes new collaborations for social and economic justice.

Artificial Intelligence as a Tool for Reducing Gender Discrimination in Hiring

Elena Pisanelli, A New Turning Point for Women: Artificial Intelligence as a Tool for Reducing Gender Discrimination in Hiring 

This paper studies whether firms’ adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) has a causal effect on their probability of hiring female managers. Using panel data on the 500 largest firms, measured by revenues, in Europe and the US, and a two-stage difference- in-differences I find that firms’ use of AI causes, on average, an increase by 3.5% in the hiring of female managers. Exploiting heterogeneity across different types of AI I find that my result is driven by the use of assessment software, rather than that of predictive algorithms. The use of assessment software increases the share of female managers hired by companies and correlates with a reduction in firms being sued for gender discrimination in hiring. Conversely, my findings show that predictive algorithms do not affect gender inequality in managerial hires.