Conditions for Women In the Workforce
US Paycheck-Fairness Bill Fails In Senate
By Ruth Mantell
Wall Street Journal
Business advocates said the Paycheck Fairness Act would have hurt firms by increasing possible damages against them and limiting their ability to defend legitimate pay differences.
* Amending the Equal Pay Act to limit the defense that employers can use to respond to charges of wage discrimination based on sex. Reasons that employers could cite would be restricted to "bona fide" factors such as a difference between employees' education, training or experience.
* Allowing the class for class-action suits in wage-discrimination cases under the Equal Pay Act to be created by an opt-out policy. Currently if employees bring an action under the Equal Pay Act they have to opt in.
* Requiring the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to collect pay information data on the sex, race and national origin or employees to enforce federal laws that prohibit pay discrimination.
* Providing for uncapped punitive and compensatory damages against employers.
Women who stress over work have more heart disease
Wed, Nov 17 2010
By Frederik Joelving
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Women with stressful jobs that offer little room for decision making and creativity have an increased risk of suffering a heart attack, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.
While doctors usually focus on standard risk factors such as high blood pressure and cholesterol, the new findings show they might also want to ask about stress.
"We don't focus as much on stress," Dr. Michelle Asha Albert, a heart doctor at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, told Reuters Health. "Stress does cause a similar magnitude of risk as some of our additional risk factors."
Albert and colleagues followed more than 17,000 female health professionals over 10 years. There were 134 heart attacks, and women with high-strain jobs were 88 percent more likely than their less-stressed out counterparts to suffer one. They were also more likely to have heart surgery.
Job insecurity -- worrying about losing your job -- didn't seem to take a toll on the ticker, however.
The link between heart disease and job strain is already well established for men, but it hadn't been clear if it also held for women, the researchers note.
They presented their findings at the American Heart Association meeting in Chicago on Tuesday, and the data still haven't been vetted by independent experts.
"It is something everybody should be worried about, not just women," said Albert.
Although there still isn't much data on whether stress reduction works, she suggested that women who are stressed out at work try to be more physically active and develop a broader social network to cope with the stress.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6AG5EY20101117weeblylink_new_window
By Frederik Joelving
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Women with stressful jobs that offer little room for decision making and creativity have an increased risk of suffering a heart attack, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.
While doctors usually focus on standard risk factors such as high blood pressure and cholesterol, the new findings show they might also want to ask about stress.
"We don't focus as much on stress," Dr. Michelle Asha Albert, a heart doctor at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, told Reuters Health. "Stress does cause a similar magnitude of risk as some of our additional risk factors."
Albert and colleagues followed more than 17,000 female health professionals over 10 years. There were 134 heart attacks, and women with high-strain jobs were 88 percent more likely than their less-stressed out counterparts to suffer one. They were also more likely to have heart surgery.
Job insecurity -- worrying about losing your job -- didn't seem to take a toll on the ticker, however.
The link between heart disease and job strain is already well established for men, but it hadn't been clear if it also held for women, the researchers note.
They presented their findings at the American Heart Association meeting in Chicago on Tuesday, and the data still haven't been vetted by independent experts.
"It is something everybody should be worried about, not just women," said Albert.
Although there still isn't much data on whether stress reduction works, she suggested that women who are stressed out at work try to be more physically active and develop a broader social network to cope with the stress.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6AG5EY20101117weeblylink_new_window
Illegal immigrant women face risks, study says
November 16, 2010
By the CNN Wire Staff
Unauthorized immigrant women do the jobs that put food on the plates of Americans, but face harassment and other challenges daily in the workplace, a study by the Southern Poverty Law Center found.
The report, titled "Injustice On Our Plates," is based on interviews with 150 immigrant women from Mexico, Guatemala and other Latin American countries.
"Despite their contributions to our economy, these immigrants live at the margins of U.S. society -- subsisting on poverty wages, enduring humiliation and exploitation in the workplace, and living in constant fear that their families will be shattered if they are detected," according to the report.
The anecdotes collected by the organization provide a glimpse of the hardships faced by agricultural workers who are in the United States illegally.
The women interviewed mostly said they came to the United States to seek a better life for their families, the report said. Critics of illegal immigration say those who want to work in the United States should get in line with others seeking a legal path in. Many of the women interviewed said they didn't meet any of the established criteria for obtaining a green card and so decided to cross illegally.
The subjects that the report focused on worked in places such as Florida, New York, North Carolina and California. They worked picking tomatoes, lettuce, green beans, apples and other produce.
"Regardless of what sector of the food industry these women worked in, they all reported feeling like they were seen by their employers as disposable workers with no lasting value, to be squeezed of every last drop of sweat and labor before being cast aside," the report said.
The challenges include low pay -- one woman reported that she earned $5.75 an hour, or sometimes 45 cents for each 32-pound bucket filled with tomatoes.
"You have to run to do 150 [buckets] to make your money for the day," the woman, identified only as Maria, told interviewers.
Sometimes, after two weeks of work, they would not get paid, she said. One boss wouldn't let the workers go to the bathroom, she said.
Farmworkers are also exposed to harmful pesticides that can cause birth defects, the report said.
According to the report, about six in 10 of America's farmworkers are unauthorized immigrants. Of the total illegal immigrant population, women are estimated to make up 4 million.
Another woman interviewed for the study, Olivia, told how she was raped by one of her supervisors. Sexual violence and harassment is widely reported by unauthorized female immigrants, the report said.
"Sexual predators view farmworker women and other undocumented women as 'perfect victims' because they are isolated, thought to lack credibility, generally do not know their rights, and may be vulnerable because they lack legal status," the study said.
A majority of the women interviewed by the center reported facing sexual harassment at work.
The report's recommendations included enacting comprehensive immigration reform that provide a path for legalization. Such efforts in Congress have been unsuccessful in the past. The center also recommends tightening labor laws for agricultural producers.
http://articles.cnn.com/2010-11-16/us/splc.women.immigrants_1_immigrant-women-illegal-immigrant-disposable-workers?_s=PM:USweeblylink_new_window
By the CNN Wire Staff
Unauthorized immigrant women do the jobs that put food on the plates of Americans, but face harassment and other challenges daily in the workplace, a study by the Southern Poverty Law Center found.
The report, titled "Injustice On Our Plates," is based on interviews with 150 immigrant women from Mexico, Guatemala and other Latin American countries.
"Despite their contributions to our economy, these immigrants live at the margins of U.S. society -- subsisting on poverty wages, enduring humiliation and exploitation in the workplace, and living in constant fear that their families will be shattered if they are detected," according to the report.
The anecdotes collected by the organization provide a glimpse of the hardships faced by agricultural workers who are in the United States illegally.
The women interviewed mostly said they came to the United States to seek a better life for their families, the report said. Critics of illegal immigration say those who want to work in the United States should get in line with others seeking a legal path in. Many of the women interviewed said they didn't meet any of the established criteria for obtaining a green card and so decided to cross illegally.
The subjects that the report focused on worked in places such as Florida, New York, North Carolina and California. They worked picking tomatoes, lettuce, green beans, apples and other produce.
"Regardless of what sector of the food industry these women worked in, they all reported feeling like they were seen by their employers as disposable workers with no lasting value, to be squeezed of every last drop of sweat and labor before being cast aside," the report said.
The challenges include low pay -- one woman reported that she earned $5.75 an hour, or sometimes 45 cents for each 32-pound bucket filled with tomatoes.
"You have to run to do 150 [buckets] to make your money for the day," the woman, identified only as Maria, told interviewers.
Sometimes, after two weeks of work, they would not get paid, she said. One boss wouldn't let the workers go to the bathroom, she said.
Farmworkers are also exposed to harmful pesticides that can cause birth defects, the report said.
According to the report, about six in 10 of America's farmworkers are unauthorized immigrants. Of the total illegal immigrant population, women are estimated to make up 4 million.
Another woman interviewed for the study, Olivia, told how she was raped by one of her supervisors. Sexual violence and harassment is widely reported by unauthorized female immigrants, the report said.
"Sexual predators view farmworker women and other undocumented women as 'perfect victims' because they are isolated, thought to lack credibility, generally do not know their rights, and may be vulnerable because they lack legal status," the study said.
A majority of the women interviewed by the center reported facing sexual harassment at work.
The report's recommendations included enacting comprehensive immigration reform that provide a path for legalization. Such efforts in Congress have been unsuccessful in the past. The center also recommends tightening labor laws for agricultural producers.
http://articles.cnn.com/2010-11-16/us/splc.women.immigrants_1_immigrant-women-illegal-immigrant-disposable-workers?_s=PM:USweeblylink_new_window