What's New

WorkLife Law has a variety of training materials and can work with you to provide trainings tailored to your organization's or company's needs.

EEOC issues guidance on Caregiver Discrimination The EEOC issued enforcement guidance about caregiver discrimination, which is another name for Family Responsibilities Discrimination. The guidance, which contains examples of personnel actions that the EEOC would consider discriminatory...
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Pregnant woman wins $2.3 million
A delivery driver informed her employer that she was pregnant and within an hour found herself placed on involuntary and unpaid medical leave because her employer thought she could not do her job.
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WLL in the News

GiGi Stone, "Are you a victim of maternal profiling?" ABC News, April 25, 2008.

Jocelyn Noveck, "When motherhood comes at an inconvenient career moment," Associated Press, April 18, 2008.

Mark Szakonyi, "Employers will face more lawsuits from caregivers,"  
Jacksonville Business Journal, February, 15, 2008.


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Upcoming Events

May 5-8, 2008

"The Massey Lectures, History of American Civilization,"  Harvard University, Cambridge, MA (Joan Williams)

May 5, 2008

"Flexible Work Schedules," Association of Legal Administrators 37th Annual Educational Conference and Exposition, Seattle, WA (Linda Chanow)

May 9, 2008

"Improve Your Bottom Line: Attract, Retain and Promote Women and Minority Lawyers," Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association, Cleveland, OH (Joan Williams, Linda Chanow, Linda Marks)

Family Responsibilities Discrimination is employment discrimination against workers who have family responsibilities. Pregnant women, mothers and fathers of young children, and employees with aging parents or sick spouses/partners may find themselves discriminated against. They may be rejected for employment, demoted, harassed, passed over for promotion, or terminated – despite good performance evaluations – simply because their employers make personnel decisions based on stereotypical notions of how they will or should act.

Here are some examples of Family Responsibilities Discrimination:

• firing pregnant employees or telling them to get an abortion if they wish to remain employed;
• giving promotions to less qualified fathers or women without children rather than to highly qualified mothers;
• developing hiring profiles that expressly exclude women with young children;
• terminating employees without a valid business reason when they return from maternity or paternity leave;
• giving parents work schedules that they cannot meet for childcare reasons while giving nonparents different schedules; and
• fabricating work infractions or performance deficiencies to justify dismissal of employees with family responsibilities.

The Center for WorkLife Law is a nonprofit research and advocacy organization. WorkLife Law works with employees, employers, attorneys, legislators, journalists, and researchers to identify and prevent Family Responsibilities Discrimination. WorkLife Law is supported by grants, university funding and private donations.

The Center’s work is made possible through support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, The Rockefeller Family Fund, The Wallace A. Gerbode Foundation, the Women’s Bar Association of the District of Columbia , Abigail Disney and the University of California , Hastings College of the Law.