Employers have failed to put in place policies that protect and support caregivers. Based on our review of 4,000 cases, we review efforts to reduce bias against caregivers in the workplace.

WorkLife Law is launching the Bias at Work Survey, a new project from our Bias Interrupters initiative. Bias at Work is a national survey gathering real-world data on workplace bias from people all across the United States. We are asking women and men in any kind of work setting to share their experiences anonymously. Our researchers will analyze the survey data with the goal of creating tools that more accurately combat workplace bias and helps to advance workplace equity.

Take the survey— and share with your friends!

The Center for WorkLife Law is pleased to announce its 2018 Summer Law Fellows. The Rebecca Pontikes Law Fellow and Stephanie Hicks Law Fellow will serve as integral members of the WorkLife Law staff. They will conduct legal research to advance protections for pregnant, parenting, and breastfeeding workers and students, to address sexual harassment at work, and to prevent family responsibilities discrimination.  They will also serve as key team members for WorkLife Law’s annual Hastings Leadership Academy for Women.

Joan C. Williams at the Center for WorkLife Law at UC Hastings College of the Law, in partnership with Susan J. Lambert at the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration and Saravanan Kesavan at the University of North Carolina Kenan-Flagler Business School, is pleased to announce the release of the Stable Scheduling Study.

The latest article by WorkLife Law Founding Director Joan C. Williams and Research and Policy Fellow Marina Multhaup reveals the major diversity initiative that your company may be missing. Assignments of “glamour work” – that is, work that gets noticed around the office and can lead to promotions – must be distributed fairly and equally.

The findings from WorkLife Law’s white paper “Does the stereotype that ‘Asian people are good at science’ help women of Asian descent in STEM careers? No” have been published in an article in the Atlantic. Co-authored by Joan C. Williams, Marina Multhaup, and Rachel Korn, the article discusses how common Asian-American stereotypes are holding back the careers of Asian-American women.

WorkLife Law Founding Director Joan C. Williams, along with co-PIs Susan Lambert and Saravanan Kesavan, have released the first findings from their study on retail scheduling. They conducted an experiment with The Gap to find out if the use of a shift-swapping app would provide retail workers with the flexibility they needed to have more control over their schedules. The results are striking – read them here.

Liz Morris outlines three key problems with a new bill introduced in Congress, the Workflex in the 21st Century Act, in her latest HuffPost blog post. The Act threatens working parents’ ability to care for and support their families by undermining existing state laws and leaving employees vulnerable to employer abuse. Check out the full post here.

New research from the Center for WorkLife Law at UC Hastings on bias against Asian women in STEM.  “The stereotype in the United States is that “Asian people are good at science.” You might think that this stereotype would advantage U.S. women of Asian descent in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) disciplines. We found the opposite: instead, they encounter the same types of bias that other people of color do. This information is important because most diversity initiatives in STEM address the challenges faced by under-represented minorities (URMs)—black and Latino/a people—but exclude Asian people.”

One of the most critical junctures for community support of breastfeeding is the mother’s return to work. When breastfeeding workers have access to both time and space for expressing breast milk, they are more likely to breastfeed for the recommended term, yet many mothers still struggle to access these simple accommodations in their workplace. Healthcare providers can and should aid nursing mothers in accessing these accommodations.