Author Archive
Posted April 10th, 2013 by Joan C. Williams
Co-written by Katherine Ullman. It’s been a rough couple of weeks for women in STEM. Most shockingly, Adria Richards, former developer evangelist at SendGrid, was fired after she publicly reported two men (one of whom was also fired) for making lewd jokes in earshot at a PyCon Conference. Richards has since received nasty messages for speaking [...]
Posted March 20th, 2013 by Joan C. Williams
Co-written by Katherine Ullman. An essay this month in The Wall Street Journal recycled a tired trope: “queen bees” in the office are making the lives of other women a living hell. We’ve heard this before. Powerful women are just grown up high-school “mean girls” chipping away at the self-confidence of the women who work with and for them. Suggesting [...]
Posted March 12th, 2013 by Joan C. Williams and Katherine Ullman
Recently, Katherine watched the three-part PBS series MAKERS in one sitting. (If you haven’t seen it yet, we highly recommend and encourage you to watch it online here). While some argue that the documentary misses the mark on feminism today, Katherine appreciated the film’s ability to move seamlessly between the different issues confronting women (sexual [...]
Posted January 31st, 2013 by Joan C. Williams
If I hear once more that the reason for the wage gap is that women don’t negotiate, I may just blow a gasket. Linda Babcock herself, the author of the studies that gave rise to the “women don’t ask” industry, has shown that women don’t negotiate for a very simple reason: they sense—correctly—that it will [...]
Posted December 4th, 2012 by Joan C. Williams
In a snarky article, the newspaper of record confirms what we already know: Kate Middleton is pregnant. She’s so nauseated that she’s in the hospital on an intravenous drip. She’s just lucky she’s not an American gal. U.S. employers regularly fire pregnant women when they need modest accommodations to keep doing their jobs. When women become [...]
Posted October 30th, 2012 by Joan C. Williams
Co-written with Katherine Ullman. Joan once wrote that the way for women to gain equality was to die childless at thirty, based on data that young women without kids earn almost as much as men. Turns out even that won’t guarantee equality. A new report released last week by the American Association of University Women (AAUW) finds that the [...]
Posted October 17th, 2012 by Joan C. Williams
Co-written by Katherine Ullman. “Binders full of women.” We all know what Mitt Romney meant during last night’s presidential debate when he discussed his “effort” to recruit more women during his tenure as Governor of Massachusetts. But what he said spread like wildfire across the internetand produced some amusing results. Our personal favorites? A picture of young Patrick Swayze with the [...]
Posted October 2nd, 2012 by Joan C. Williams
Every year The Center for WorkLife Law, which I direct, runs a leadership academy for women law firm partners. One key message we send is that sometimes what it takes to make partner is different from what it takes to rise in the partnership. “I’ve noticed that the women work so exceptionally hard,” said a [...]
Posted September 21st, 2012 by Joan C. Williams
Susan Lambert, Associate Professor at the University of Chicago’s School of Social Service Administration and the author of a much-discussed op-ed in yesterday’s New York Times, once told me that she gets a lot of grief. “You study what,” say her social work friends. “Scheduling?” I am happy Susan’s brilliant work is getting the attention it deserves, [...]
Posted September 13th, 2012 by Joan C. Williams
Co-written with Katherine Ullman Like just about every other feminist on the Internet, I’ve read quite a bit about Marissa Mayer lately: She’s the new CEO of Yahoo, she’s about to have her first child, she’s going to be making $59 million, she’s behind some of Google’s most influential contributions and she likes periwinkle turtlenecks. But then I read some strange [...]
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