In all of Lean In’s research on the state of women at work, we see the same general pattern: Women are having a worse experience than men. Women of color are having a worse experience than white women. And Black women in particular are having the worst experience of all.

This report offers a detailed look at the barriers holding Black women back at work. It also outlines specific steps companies should take to make sure Black women are treated fairly and given equal opportunities to learn, grow, and lead. Read more>>>

Every choice on what to do about schooling amid a pandemic is potentially risky or unfair. Even if the problem is systemic, the angst is personal. Read more>>>

As millions of American families face an uncertain start to the school year, the anger of women who find themselves expected to be teacher, caregiver, employee and parent is fueling a political uprising. Read more>>>

Shortly after Dermot F. Shea was appointed New York City’s police commissioner, he summoned one of the department’s highest-ranking women to his office and told her there would be some changes.

The woman, Chief Lori Pollock, was in charge of the department’s data-driven, crime-fighting strategy and had asked to be considered to become the next chief of detectives. It was a coveted promotion that two of her predecessors had received, including Mr. Shea.

Instead Chief Pollock was reassigned to head the Office of Collaborative Policing, a role she considered a demotion. Read more>>>

An old cartoon from 1976 has been circulating on social media recently, titled “My Wife Doesn’t Work.” In 20 panels, it follows the daily routine of a stay-at-home mom: At 7 a.m., she’s packing lunches; at 11 a.m., she’s running errands; at 2 and 3 and 5 p.m., she’s sweeping, ironing and dishwashing while a toddler tugs on her skirt. The titular panel comes at 1 p.m. when we drop in on her husband chatting with a colleague. “My wife doesn’t work,” he explains. The joke has one of two interpretations: either he has no idea how much work it takes to run a house because he’s not around to see this labor, or he’s aware of it but doesn’t count it as “work.” Maybe both. Read more>>>

1. Get a Credit Card in her own name – it wasn’t until 1974 that a law forced credit card companies to issue cards to women without their husband’s signature.

2. Be guaranteed that they wouldn’t be unceremoniously fired for the offense of getting pregnant – that changed with the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of *1978*!

3. Serve on a jury – It varied by state (Utah deemed women fit for jury duty way back in 1879), but the main reason women were kept out of jury pools was that they were considered the center of the home, which was their primary responsibility as caregivers. They were also thought to be too fragile to hear the grisly details of crimes and too sympathetic by nature to be able to remain objective about those accused of offenses. In 1961, the Supreme Court unanimously upheld a Florida law that exempted women from serving on juries. It wasn’t until 1973 that women could serve on juries in all 50 states.

4. Fight on the front lines – admitted into military academies in 1976 it wasn’t until 2013 that the military ban on women in combat was lifted. Prior to 1973 women were only allowed in the military as nurses or support staff.

5. Get an Ivy League education – Yale and Princeton didn’t accept female students until 1969. Harvard didn’t admit women until 1977 (when it merged with the all-female Radcliffe College). Brown (which merged with women’s college Pembroke), Dartmouth and Columbia did not offer admission to women until 1971, 1972 and 1981, respectively. Other case-specific instances allowed some women to take certain classes at Ivy League institutions (such as Barnard women taking classes at Columbia), but, by and large, women in the ’60s who harbored Ivy League dreams had to put them on hold.

6. Take legal action against workplace sexual harassment. Indeed the first time a court recognized office sexual harassment as grounds for any legal action was in 1977!

7. Decide not to have sex if their husband wanted to – spousal rape wasn’t criminalized in all 50 states until 1993. Read that again … 1993.

8. Obtain health insurance at the same monetary rate as a man. Sex discrimination wasn’t outlawed in health insurance until 2010 and today many, including sitting elected officials at the Federal level, feel women don’t mind paying a little more. Again, that date was 2010.

9. The birth control pill: Issues like reproductive freedom and a woman’s right to decide when and whether to have children were only just beginning to be openly discussed in the 1960s. In 1957, the FDA approved of the birth control pill but only for “severe menstrual distress.” In 1960, the pill was approved for use as a contraceptive. Even so, the pill was illegal in some states and could be prescribed only to married women for purposes of family planning, and not all pharmacies stocked it. Some of those opposed said oral contraceptives were “immoral, promoted prostitution and were tantamount to abortion.” It wasn’t until several years later that birth control was approved for use by all women, regardless of marital status. In short, birth control meant a woman could complete her education, enter the work force and plan her own life.

These points have gone viral for a reason – they sound made-up and exaggerated. However, fact-checking organization Snopes corroborated them!

Three decades ago, in one of most criticized moments of his career, Joe Biden oversaw the all-male committee that heard sexual harassment allegations against Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas.

Now, as Biden is days away from making good on his promise to pick a woman as his running mate, he is also seeking to complete an effort begun years agoto make amends for his stewardship of those hearings — which even Biden has said were unfair to accuser Anita Hill — and win the support of women voters crucial to his election. Read more>>>

To Dr. Nwora, an internal medicine and pediatrics resident at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, the idea of “professionalism” in medicine is one coded with racial and gendered assumptions. The archetypal doctors she was exposed to were so often white and male — from the faculty at her medical school to the fictional doctors on television shows. “When I think about a medical professional, I think about a white man in a white coat with a prescription pad,” she said. “I don’t think about people who look like myself and my friends.”

She saw those “professional” stereotypes underscored in the publication of a study, in the Journal of Vascular Surgery, about so-called unprofessional social media content among young vascular surgeons. The piece ran online in December 2019, but resurfaced last week because it was set for publication in the journal’s August print issue. Read More>>>

Bankrate

It is a poorly kept secret that retail campaigns often target female consumers due to the antiquated idea that women like to shop and spend more money than men. Perhaps a better-kept secret in consumer sales, however, is not that women face more targeted advertising, but that items women buy often cost more than identical or very similar “men’s” products.

Gender-specific pricing (where items for women cost more than items for men) is often referred to as the “Pink Tax.” Manufacturers firmly entrench female consumers in their gender-normative sales practices with the use of bright pink or purple packaging, and sweet scents like peony, vanilla and even “fruity bubble in paradise” to make sure women know the product is just for them. Read more>>>