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WorkLife Law has a variety of training materials and can work with you to provide trainings tailored to your organization's or company's needs.

EEOC issues guidance on Caregiver Discrimination The EEOC issued enforcement guidance about caregiver discrimination, which is another name for Family Responsibilities Discrimination. The guidance, which contains examples of personnel actions that the EEOC would consider discriminatory...
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Pregnant woman wins $2.3 million
A delivery driver informed her employer that she was pregnant and within an hour found herself placed on involuntary and unpaid medical leave because her employer thought she could not do her job.
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WLL in the News

Judi Casey, "The Motherhood Penalty," Sloan Work and Family Blog, June 30, 2008.


Laura Vanderkam, "What Moms can Learn from Dad," USA Today, June 24, 2008.


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Upcoming Events

October 3, 2008
"New Frontiers in Research on Diversity:  Caregiver Bias in the 21st Century Workplace."  University of Rhode Island ADVANCE Program.  University of Rhode Island. Kingston, RI (Joan Williams)

October 9-11, 2008

"The New Norm of Faculty Flexibility," Iowa State University, Ames, IA (Joan Williams)

October 14, 2008

"Unbending Gender:  Why Family and Work Conflict and What To Do About It."  Brown University ADVANCE Program, Brown University. Providence, RI (Joan Williams)

Family Responsibilities Discrimination is employment discrimination against workers who have family responsibilities. Pregnant women, mothers and fathers of young children, and employees with aging parents or sick spouses/partners may find themselves discriminated against. They may be rejected for employment, demoted, harassed, passed over for promotion, or terminated – despite good performance evaluations – simply because their employers make personnel decisions based on stereotypical notions of how they will or should act.

Here are some examples of Family Responsibilities Discrimination:

• firing pregnant employees or telling them to get an abortion if they wish to remain employed;
• giving promotions to less qualified fathers or women without children rather than to highly qualified mothers;
• developing hiring profiles that expressly exclude women with young children;
• terminating employees without a valid business reason when they return from maternity or paternity leave;
• giving parents work schedules that they cannot meet for childcare reasons while giving nonparents different schedules; and
• fabricating work infractions or performance deficiencies to justify dismissal of employees with family responsibilities.

The Center for WorkLife Law is a nonprofit research and advocacy organization. WorkLife Law works with employees, employers, attorneys, legislators, journalists, and researchers to identify and prevent Family Responsibilities Discrimination. WorkLife Law is supported by grants, university funding and private donations.

The Center’s work is made possible through support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, The Rockefeller Family Fund, The Wallace A. Gerbode Foundation, the Women’s Bar Association of the District of Columbia , Abigail Disney and the University of California , Hastings College of the Law.