“In today’s political climate, it’s startling to remember that 80 years ago, in 1933, the Senate overwhelmingly voted to establish a 30-hour workweek. The bill failed in the House, but five years later the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 gave Americans a statutory 40-hour workweek. […] As of 2000, the average dual-earner couple worked a combined 82 hours a week, while almost 15 percent of married couples had a joint workweek of 100 hours or more.
Astonishingly, despite the increased workload of families, and even though 70 percent of American children now live in households where every adult in the home is employed, in the past 20 years the United States has not passed any major federal initiative to help workers accommodate their family and work demands. The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 guaranteed covered workers up to 12 weeks unpaid leave after a child’s birth or adoption or in case of a family illness. Although only about half the total work force was eligible, it seemed a promising start. But aside from the belated requirement of the new Affordable Care Act that nursing mothers be given a private space at work to pump breast milk, the F.M.L.A. turned out to be the inadequate end.
Meanwhile, since 1990 other nations with comparable resources have implemented a comprehensive agenda of “work-family reconciliation” acts. As a result, when the United States’ work-family policies are compared with those of countries at similar levels of economic and political development, the United States comes in dead last.
Out of nearly 200 countries studied by Jody Heymann, dean of the school of public health at the University of California, Los Angeles, and her team of researchers for their new book, “Children’s Chances,” 180 now offer guaranteed paid leave to new mothers, and 81 offer paid leave to fathers. They found that 175 mandate paid annual leave for workers, and 162 limit the maximum length of the workweek. The United States offers none of these protections.
A 1997 European Union directive prohibits employers from paying part-time workers lower hourly rates than full-time workers, excluding them from pension plans or limiting paid leaves to full-time workers. By contrast, American workers who reduce hours for family reasons typically lose their benefits and take an hourly wage cut.
Is it any surprise that American workers express higher levels of work-family conflict than workers in any of our European counterparts? Or that women’s labor-force participation has been overtaken? In 1990, the United States ranked sixth in female labor participation among 22 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which is made up of most of the globe’s wealthier countries. By 2010, according to an economic research paper by Cornell researchers Francine Blau and Lawrence Kahn, released last month, we had fallen to 17th place, with about 30 percent of that decline a direct result of our failure to keep pace with other countries’ family-friendly work policies. American women have not abandoned the desire to combine work and family. Far from it. […] Nor have men given up the ideal of gender equity. […]
BUT when people are caught between the hard place of bad working conditions and the rock wall of politicians’ resistance to family-friendly reforms, it is hard to live up to such aspirations.”
“Over the next few days, I began to wonder: Do such pieces of advice eliminate personal style–either regarding speaking or dressing? Do they mandate an appearance of ethnic homogeneity? I mean, did Aung Sung Suu Kyyi or Winnie Mandela or Indira Gandhi (all powerful global women leaders and speakers) avoid patterns and jewels? In this rapidly shrinking global world, was it possible for all women to dress alike anyway? I approach this issue through a particular lens, of course, that of a woman of color, but also a woman whose parents are immigrants. I am also a woman who watched my own mother, who came to this country at the age of 19 and was quite a jeans-and-beads wearing hippie for a number of years, stop wearing Western clothes altogether. It was shortly after the racist ‘dotbuster’ incidents in New Jersey–when a group of thugs who declared themselves to be ‘dotbusters’ were terrorizing people of Indian origin. My mother, determined to show solidarity and pride in her identity, went cold turkey–no more jeans, no more Western clothes. She’s a widely known academic and activist, and often does public lectures and trainings and yet–she’s always dressed in either a salwaar kamesee or sari, with, yes, a bindi on her forehead. Now, I understand, both my mother, and now I, are academics and there are obviously different expectations regarding dress and public presentation in many professions. Corporate America or television journalism are less forgiving regarding presentation style than a university, or a creative business. Yet, I have an aunt who is an attorney who has developed her own style of professional dressing for the courtroom–a dark colored cotton sari topped by a suit jacket. And obviously, corporate women in India and other countries surely wear different styles of professional dress. I too am usually found with at least one piece of Indian clothing on my body–a flowing kurta on top of dark pants, topped by a blazer or jacket. It’s my style, my interpretation of professorial dress codes, and I think, like my mother, it also reflects something political: an identification with my roots and origins that I’m not willing to give up. Might a woman wearing a sari at a podium get a different reception than a woman wearing a dark suit? Perhaps. I guess it depends if the podium is in New York or Topeka, Washington or New Dilli. But isn’t that difference in reception one worth challenging and interrogating? I guess my point is ethnic dressing, like standing straight, meeting people in the eye when I talk, and not apologizing for my point of view, is actually a form of assertive communication on my part. It’s a personal choice–just as any other woman’s style of professional presentation is her personal choice.”
—As always, Sayantani DasGupta blows me away with her analysis, and this piece about “ethnic dressing” in the workplace—whose concepts can apply to the controversies about Black people wearing locs, afros, and other natural hairstyles in the workplace—is so spot-on.ENDA to be reintroduced next month
washingtonblade.comThe Employment Non-Discrimination Act is expected to be reintroduced to the U.S. House of Representatives next month, reports the Washington Blade.
Rep. Jared Polis, the bill’s author and the senior openly gay member of the U.S. House, says he’ll reintroduce the bill in April and that it may be redrafted before then. Some details on the potential changes as reported by the Blade:
It’s unclear what the nature of the changes might be, but one source familiar with ENDA told the Washington Blade the bill is being reconsidered with respect to religious exemption and disparate impact to make the legislation’s protections stronger for LGBT workers than previously written. The changes are being considered under the assumption the legislation won’t pass anyway with Republicans in control of the U.S. House.
ENDA has previously included a strong religious exemption. In the most recent version of the bill, Section 6 provided an exemption for religious organizations and businesses that were also exempt under Title VII of the Civil Rights Acts of 1964.
The legislation also avoided the issue of disparate impact. Under that doctrine, which is found under Title VII, a violation of the law may be found if an employer has a practice that discriminates against workers, even though it doesn’t seem discriminatory on its face.
For example, a company that says it won’t hire anyone for a job who’s shorter than 5’10″ could be found in violation of the law on the basis of gender discrimination because most women aren’t that tall. It’s unclear how disparate impact would apply to LGBT people.
It’s high time we pass ENDA already and make workplace inequality a thing of the past. Counting on our legislators to make this happen. There are no more excuses. (PS: For an awesome read on this topic, check out this recent CNN piece about how LGBT people in the South, specifically Mississippi, stay closeted for fear of losing their jobs.)
