Our latest report Protecting Parents During COVID-19: State and Local Laws Prohibit Discrimination at Work outlines state and local laws throughout the U.S. that protect parents from work discrimination. According to the report, nearly 30% of workers are protected under these laws.

Our latest report, Exposed: Discrimination Against Breastfeeding Workers, analyzes breastfeeding legal cases from the last decade to document patterns of discrimination, and analyzes new data on the scope of existing state and federal laws to protect against discrimination. We found that 27.6 million women of childbearing age don’t have the basic protections needed by all breastfeeding workers.

With the help of the Society of Women Engineers, the Center for WorkLife Law produced a comprehensive survey documenting in the real world what social psychologists have long observed in labs: that women and people of color experience workplace hurdles that do not exist for white men.

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.