April 2016 Update: The wage gap cited has improved by 1% point since this article was originally posted in April 2015. What is a woman worth? On Tuesday, April 14, 2015, we celebrate Equal Pay Day, a day to acknowledge the continuing gap in wages between women and men. By now, we are all familiar with the statistics 鈥� women employed full-time, year-round earn only 78 cents for every dollar a man earns. While some of this gap is attributable to differences in worker鈥檚 education, training or experience, about 40% of the pay gap can be attributed to discrimination. What does this familiar narrative mean for individual women? Let鈥檚 start with STEM (science, technology, engineering and math). While girls have closed the gap with boys in high school science and math, women are losing ground in engineering and computing. While Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, recommends leaning in, Gamergate reminded us...

Recently, NPR, with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Harvard School of Public Health, released a poll that found that one-quarter of Americans reported that they had experienced significant amounts of stress in the previous month. That level of stress is similar to levels found in earlier polls. But is this much stress making us sick? The poll found that 70% of people experiencing high levels of stress reported that they were sleeping less--not getting enough sleep can negatively affect health. Other research tells us even more about the possible health consequences of too much stress and our capacity to cope with it. One of the top three sources of stress in the NPR poll, for individuals reporting high levels of stress, was stress from work problems. We know that jobs that are very stressful, with too much to do, can contribute to health problems, but only when those demands or...

Last Sunday鈥檚 New York Times Magazine article provides a follow-up on the women of the so-called Opt-Out Revolution that the Times first heralded in 2003. The Times rightly points out the price these women have paid--and the forces that pushed them out in the first place--the culture of Motherhood and an inhospitable corporate culture among them. Erin Gloria Ryan, at Jezebel.com provides an even more pointed critique of the 鈥減romises鈥� of opting out. But both articles miss the most important point鈥搕he Opt-Out Revolution was not a 鈥渞evolution,鈥� it was a media creation that took a drop in employment rates among mothers of infants in the 2000 Census, and the experiences of a few women with husbands with high salaries during an economic period when the haves seemed to have it all--pre-Great Recession--and used that mythology to suggest that the reason women don鈥檛 fare as well in the workplace is because 鈥渢hey...

Sheryl Sandberg鈥檚 recent book, Lean In, created a media frenzy. Before that, Ann-Marie Slaughter鈥檚 2012 article in The Atlantic, 鈥淲hy Women Still Can鈥檛 Have It All,鈥� was hailed as another round in the Mommy Wars. It鈥檚 time to call a truce. I鈥檇 like to begin with a brief personal history. When I was ten, my parents divorced. While my father provided some financial support, it was not enough to support four kids. So, when I was 13, my mother put my four-year old brother in nursery school and went back to work. I learned at my mother鈥檚 knee that women do what they need to do to take care of their families. By the time I was 25, I had worked as a babysitter, cafeteria worker, sales clerk, library clerk, passport adjudicator, child care teacher, community organizer, drug program counselor, and research assistant. As a child of the second wave of...

This commentary appears in the Research & Action Report, Spring/Summer 2013 Volume 34 鈥� Number 2 (forthcoming), published by the 妻友社区. When we think about employment and health, we often think about high risk jobs and occupational safety. The recent deaths of first responders in Massachusetts and Texas highlight these serious concerns. However, many workers are exposed to unhealthy conditions that, while not lethal, seriously affect their health. Trends in the new economy of downsizing, job instability, increased workload and longer hours have led to rising concerns about the health consequences of occupational stress. While both men and women experience stress-related illnesses, women are twice as likely as men to suffer from these consequences due to unhealthy working conditions. Jobs with heavy demands and little latitude in managing or meeting demands are particularly stressful, and women of all races, as well as men of color, are more likely...

Are you paid what you鈥檙e worth? How much do you earn? Is your paycheck fair? These are the kinds of questions we don鈥檛 talk about in public, or even with co-workers. We might broach them with close friends or family, but many Americans don鈥檛 like to talk about whether our paychecks are fair. However, when women earn 77 cents for every dollar a man earns, and this gender wage gap holds at all levels of education, we have to ask what鈥檚 at play here. For Black and Latino women, the gap is even greater; Black women earn 70 cents for every dollar earned by men of all races, and Latinas earn only 60 cents. Is it that women put family and children first, and that affects their pay, because they work part-time or take time out of the workforce? While women who work part-time or take time out of the workforce...

November is National Family Caregivers Month, a time to recognize those who care for family, friends, and neighbors, including the elderly, sick and disabled. While the elderly are healthier now than in previous generations, about 17 percent of Americans 65 and older need assistance with one or more daily activities, such as bathing or dressing (Himes, 2002); many more need assistance with chores, errands or transportation. Family members in the community provide most of this assistance; for example, 26 percent of adult daughters and 15 percent of adult sons report spending at least 100 hours/year caring for or helping their older parents (Johnson & Lo Sasso, 2000). While important, these numbers obscure the many ways in which we are each embedded in networks of care. Some of us are directly involved in hands-on caregiving, but care also encompasses 鈥渃aring about鈥� 鈥� paying attention in such a way that one sees and...