Empowering professional women through reproductive stages. Addressing work-life challenges, protections, and guidance.
Your Divorce at Work: To Share or Not to Share?
The main reason to notify your employer about your divorce is to let them know how it might affect you personally and thus affect your work.
The Supreme Court Issues a Favorable Ruling for LGBTQ Employment Rights
New York law already prohibits sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination, but it was not until this 2020 decision that federal law has included both of these categories of people in its definition of “sex” discrimination in employment and elsewhere. Now, NYC employers who discriminate against LGBTQ employees based on their sexual orientation or gender identities violate NY state, NY city and federal law. LGBTQ employees around the country can enforce their newfound rights through filing EEOC “charges” as well as through private lawsuits.
Your Rights as a Pregnant Employee During the Coronavirus Pandemic
Pregnant employees face a unique set of pregnancy-related stressors as they anticipate giving birth. Many pregnant women understandably experience anxiety regarding job security. Despite federal, state and local governments passing laws that protect pregnant employees, we still have a long way to go before pregnant employees feel entirely safe and empowered in the workplace.
"What I've Learned From My Pregnancy Discrimination Experience" - by Chelsey Glasson
You’ll quickly learn in vetting attorneys that there are many different approaches to fighting pregnancy discrimination legally... I highly recommend checking out Jack Tuckner’s podcast for a more comprehensive overview of your options.
What Laws Prohibit Sex or Gender-Based Pay Discrimination?
Are you being paid less than your male counterparts? Learn about the laws that protect you against illegal sex-based unequal pay, also known as gender pay disparity.
Candidates Finally Talked About Paid Leave — But They’re Still Missing the Point
What is the Federal Equal Pay Act?
Are you being paid less than a man at your company, even though you are performing the same work? Learn about your rights under the federal Equal Pay Act.
Can I Refuse to Travel if I’m Pregnant?
If you’re pregnant, business travel can be difficult, especially if you’re having complications. What are your legal rights and what conversation should you have with your boss?
Can my employer discriminate against me based on my hairstyle?
What Can I Do if My Company Won’t Address My Sexual Harassment Complaint?
You’ve made a written complaint to your company about being sexually harassed, but they won’t do anything. What should you do next? What are your options?
Can I be fired for reporting sexual harassment?
You cannot be fired FOR reporting sexual harassment, as that’s illegal retaliation, because the sexual harassment reporting itself is protected activity under United States and your state’s civil rights laws.
What Must a Company Do When a Sexual Harassment Claim is Made?
Once you make a sexual harassment claim to your company, they cannot simply ignore it. Find out what steps the company must take after a claim is made.
Gender Expression, Gender Identity Protection Bill Now Protects You in New York
Gender Expression, Gender Identity Protection Bill that will amend the New York State’s Human Rights Law to protect all binary gender, nonconforming employees, and transgender employees from discriminatory treatment.
Breastfeeding at Work
Under federal law, since 2010, women returning from maternity leave who are breastfeeding, nursing parents - are entitled to a clean, private, non-restroom, non-bathroom space in which to express milk; to take a break and to lactate on a similar schedule to what your baby would be doing, nursing, if you were home, two or three times a day. Otherwise, it's very painful, you can develop mastitis, it may interfere permanently with your ability to breastfeed, and it’s illegal.
Happy July 4th! Paid Maternity Leave Finally a Reality in NY!
Here’s one thing all pregnant working women in the United States now have in every State in the Union, and that’s the right not to be treated differently, not to experience hostility, backlash, a diminution, a degradation to the terms or the conditions or the privileges of your employment because of your pregnancy, because of your childbirth, or because of a related medical condition.
Lactation and Work: Your Rights
if your company has at least 50 employees, you are covered for up to a year after your baby is born, you are permitted, and they are required to create, make this space for you to express milk and continue lactating during working hours. Unpaid time, but they can't discriminate and they must permit you to do so. If your employer does not have 50 employees, approximately half of the states in the United States have their own lactation laws such as in New York, and Connecticut, where I practice law - both of those laws go farther than the federal law in protecting women who are lactating.
Pregnancy Discrimination: What to do?
Pregnancy discrimination in the workplace is illegal, but it happens all the time. So you need to be proactive. It’s not as if your company’s gonna grow a heart, all of a sudden.
Sex Discrimination Makes Me Mad, How About You?
If you are a woman being paid less than a man, or treated worse than you should be treated at work because you’re a woman, because you’re pregnant, because you had a baby, because you took some protected disability leave either while you were pregnant, or after your baby was born, and now you are being penalized for it, or punished for it, you have to oppose it.
NYCHRL revised May 9, 2018 to cover ALL employees in sexual harassment cases
Under the new revised statute as of May 9, 2018, even if you're the only employee, and you are being sexually harassed, being subjected to unwelcome sexual conduct, a sexually hostile work environment, you are in a position now to hold your employer accountable.
No more mandatory, private arbitration of NY sexual harassment cases
Why this is also really big news is that federal law, the federal Arbitration Act, case law interpreting it - permits employers to require employees who are starting a job as a condition of that employment to accept the notion that you give up your right to a jury trial, you give up your right to hold your employer accountable in court in a public forum for free when, if and when, you're being discriminated against.