Tag Archive for "discrimination"

Posts Tagged discrimination

Prominent women’s colleges unwilling to open doors to trans women

Last summer, Calliope Wong, then a high school senior, began an open-letter campaign regarding the admissions policies of Smith College. Calliope had hoped to apply for admission to their undergraduate program. But as a trans woman, Calliope encountered an admissions policy at Smith with such prohibitively high demands and so many inconsistencies that her application was ultimately denied consideration, even after following instructions given to her through repeated, direct communication with members of the Smith College administration in which they encouraged her to apply. (Here’s a photo of the rejection letter she received, courtesy Transwomen@Smith Tumblr)

The actions of the Smith College administration constitute a discriminatory bar against trans women. But after reaching out to over ...

By Maya Dusenbery • 11 years ago

Chart of the Day: The gender wage gap widened last year

A new report from the Institute for Women’s Policy Research shows that our progress in closing the gender wage gap has stalled–and actually backslid last year. The ratio of women’s to men’s median weekly full-time earnings was 80.9 percent in 2012, a decline of more than one percentage point from 2011. In fact, you have to go all the way back to the 1990s to see any significant, sustained improvement on the gap. “Since 2001 the annual gender earnings gap narrowed by only about one percentage point.” Dismal.

By Alexandra Brodsky • 11 years ago

Daily Feminist Cheat Sheet

If you haven’t yet, go read @ClinicEscort‘s account of explaining the importance of abortion rights to an Amtrak-full of students heading home from Saturday’s “March for Uterine Conscription” (scroll down to January 26).

The NYT on the BS lawsuits challenging religious groups’ responsibility to provide insurance that covers birth control under the new health care law.

The Boy Scouts are close to ending their ban on gay members and leaders.

In case you haven’t heard, Hillary Clinton might be the next U.S. president.

And her supposed disinterest in running has become a bit less convincing over time.

Family Inequality ranks workplace gender discrimination bills.

Spoiler Alert: What we should learn from Downton Abbey about maternal health.

On queer rights, ...

The NYT on ...

By Katie Halper • 11 years ago

Walmart claims discrimination too varied to be discrimination

Once again, women are suing Wal-Mart for discriminating against them based on their gender, seeking “to end Wal-Mart’s discriminatory practices regarding the pay and promotion of female employees.”

Tuesday, Three women from Tennessee claimed they were denied training opportunities and were paid less than their male co-workers and are seeking class-action status for current and former female employees at stores in Tennessee, Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia and Mississippi. One of the women suing, Bobbie Millner, accidentally received the paycheck of another worker who was male and earned thousands more a year, although he was less experienced. A Wal-Mart manager explain the discrepancy by saying “men needed to earn more.”

In 2011, the Supreme Court rejected a class action suit ...

Tuesday, Three women from Tennessee claimed they ...

By Jos Truitt • 11 years ago

Breaking: Health care law protects against gender identity discrimination

The Affordable Care Act, aka Health care reform, aka Obamacare, aka that thing the Supreme Court said was constitutional, includes a ban on sex discrimination in federally-funded health services. In another big win for the transgender community, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has clarified that this covers discrimination based on gender identity. This means that excluding someone from accessing health care because they are trans or gender non-conforming is discrimination. The HHS Office of Civil Rights will now hear and investigate complaints about gender identity discrimination, treating them as sex discrimination.

This comes on the heels of the EEOC saying they will hear complaints of gender identity discrimination in employment, making it part of a very exciting ...

By Syreeta McFadden • 11 years ago

Are all job programs created equal?

The Southern Poverty Law Center has filed a sexual descrimination suit against Asheville-Buncombe Community Christian Ministry (ABCCM) of Asheville, North Carolina. The SPLC alleges that women veterans were given unequal access to job training classes, as well as, resident support in comparison to men.

The SPLC filed the complaint on behalf of Bagby, an Army veteran, and other female veterans. It details how female veterans are excluded from job training and educational programs provided to male veterans that include truck driving and culinary arts skills. Women have access to classes such as knitting, art therapy, yoga, meditation, how to declutter your room, self-esteem and Bible study, according to the filing.

We’ll have yet to see what the findings will determine. ...

By Samhita • 11 years ago

Breaking: GOP blocks pay equity

The Senate GOP has blocked the Paycheck Fairness Act which should put to rest any suspicions you may have had that the GOP’s current game isn’t to remove all women’s rights and make their lives as miserable as possible. The vote was 52-47 to block the measure.

Pay equity would have given women some protection from pay discrimination, including fees to people that pay different based on gender, to give transparency around salaries so you can know if an employer is biased and to protect those that bring lawsuits of pay discrimination.

Instead, via Think Progress,

Republicans framed the measure as a useless bureaucratic roadblock that would have hindered free enterprise and helped trial lawyers. Sen. Dean Heller (R-NV) called the ...

By Vanessa • 11 years ago

NYT fail: “Men invented the internet”

Grace Murray Hopper: American computer scientist and U.S. Navy officer, one of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I computer and developed the first compiler for a computer programming language. Pic via Boing Boing.

Xeni Jardin at Boing Boing has a great response to this weekend’s New York Times’ piece on Ellen Pao’s sexual discrimination lawsuit against the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, which is problematic in its very first line:

MEN invented the Internet. And not just any men. Men with pocket protectors. Men who idolized Mr. Spock and cried when Steve Jobs died. Nerds. Geeks. Give them their due. Without men, we would never know what our friends were doing five minutes ago.

Jardin responds:

Radia “Mother ...

Xeni Jardin at Boing Boing ...