Liz O Donnell | MomsRising

Author of Mogul, Mom & Maid: The Balancing Act of the Modern Woman

Liz O’Donnell is a working mother and author of Mogul, Mom & Maid: The Balancing Act of the Modern Woman. A public relations executive at Double Forte, she is also the founder of Hello Ladies, an award winning website for smart, busy women named one of the top 100 websites for women by Forbes and a Best of the Net by Working Mother. Liz is a regular contributor to The Huffington Post and her writing has also appeared in The Boston Globe Magazine, The Atlanta Journal Constitution, The Tampa Tribune, PTO Today, Gatehouse Media and The Glass Hammer.

Liz lives with her husband and two children near Boston and regularly juggles family, career and community interests. She is a recovering PTO president, a current Town Meeting Member, and co-founder of a non-partisan organization committed to encouraging and supporting women’s involvement in local politics.

Blog Post List

Realistic & Fair Wages

April 8, 2014

More than fifty years after the passage of the Equal Pay Act, the gender-based wage gap has only shrunk by 17.6 cents and it is predicted to take another fifty years until it disappears. Today is Equal Pay Day, the day we acknowledge a woman needs to work a year and three months to earn what a man earned in one year. We can expect the day will be marked in many of the same ways it’s been marked in the past years. President Obama will observe the day by signing an executive order and a presidential memorandum designed to promote equal pay for women. Other Democrats will most likely raise their...

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Open Flexible Work

December 13, 2013

Last Sunday’s New York Times article “ Wall Street Mothers, Stay-Home Fathers ” may focus on a small but growing sliver of couples in the privileged world of Wall Street, but there is a message in there for all working parents: stay-at-home fathers are not like stay-at-home mothers, and actually, we shouldn’t want them to be. Authors Jodi Kantor and Jessica Silver-Greenberg feature a group of Wall Street women who are married to men who stay home. Free from the burdens of domestic duties, the women are able to focus full force on their careers. Mostly. Just past the halfway mark in the...

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Paid Family Leave Paid Sick Days

June 30, 2013

A recent article in the New York Times seems to confuse corporate perks with what should be corporate priorities. In “ The Calorie-Packed Perk ,” Molly Young wrote about the many perks high tech start-ups offer employees: birthday cake, barbecue, Pinkberry, pinball machines, nursing rooms and “lactation consultants.” (Quotation marks hers, not mine.) According to BusinessDictionary.com, a perk is a privilege “granted to employees in addition to their salaries and benefits (such as medial and pension plans). True perks have little or no cash value or tax implications and may include company...

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Open Flexible Work Realistic & Fair Wages

May 12, 2013

After a long week at work, and the weekend filled with two soccer games, a dance recital and a birthday party, I’ll drive 75 minutes to visit my mother this Mother’s Day. There’s no time for breakfast in bed, a manicure/pedicure with friends or dinner and a movie. That’s okay; that’s not what this working mother wanted for Mother’s Day anyway. You know what I do want for all working mothers? I want: Paid Sick Leave. Almost half (48 percent) of private-sector workers do not have paid sick days. As a working mother, it’s common sense that occasionally you’ll need time to care for yourself or...

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Open Flexible Work

October 21, 2012

More telling than Governor Mitt Romney’s inaccurate “binders full of women” comment during the presidential debate last week, were his comments about workplace flexibility, and, the comments he didn’t make. When asked by voter Katherine Fenton how he planned to rectify the inequalities in the workplace, Romney said, “I recognized that if you’re going to have women in the workforce that sometimes you need to be more flexible. My chief of staff, for instance, had two kids that were still in school. She said, I can’t be here until 7 or 8 o’clock at night. I need to be able to get home at 5 o’...

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Realistic & Fair Wages

September 16, 2012

Data from the U.S. Census released this week revealed the sobering fact the gender wage gap is not closing; the 2011 data is not statistically different from the 2010 data. Last year, the median earnings of women who worked full time, year-round was 77 percent of that for men working full time, year-round. That gap translates into approximately $10,000 less per year in median earnings. For women of color, the gap is even larger. On top of the gender-based gap, women’s wages are threatened by the “mommy penalty.” A report published by The University of Chicago Press highlights two studies...

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Paid Sick Days Realistic & Fair Wages

September 4, 2012

Mitt Romney (Photo credit: NewsHour) The Republican National Convention concluded last week after Mitt Romney accepted his party’s nomination and not before Republicans made a desperate attempt to court women voters. The convention featured an impressive lineup of female speakers including former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, New Hampshire Senator Kelly Ayotte, New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez and of course, Ann Romney who talked about mothers saying, “You are the best of America. You are the hope of America. Tonight we salute you and sing your praises.” Romney himself mentioned the...

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Realistic & Fair Wages

April 17, 2012

Tuesday, April 17 is Equal Pay Day, again. Equal Pay Day 2009 was impetus for my starting this blog. That day I dropped my son at school; at my request he was wearing red – one of the ways activists observe the day. As he was filing into class, I turned to a group of mothers and noted how proud I was he was helping me observe the event. The women, including several who work outside the home, had never heard of the gender wage gap. I was shocked and thought to myself, “Hello ladies, you need to know this!” A blog was born. Back then, women earned, on average, just 77 cents for every dollar a...

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Liz O'Donnell

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Blog Post List

For Many The Wage Gap Starts at Home

Moguls, Moms & Maids: From Wall Street to Main Street

Support for Working Mothers Shouldn't Be a Perk

What to Give a Working Mother for Mother’s Day

What Romney Didn’t Say Most Troubling for Working Mothers

For Working Mom, the Wage Gap is Personal

The GOPs Mixed Message to Mom

This is the Year to Close the Wage Gap