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 your child when they are too sick to go to school or daycare. It’s also likely you’ll need time to care for an elderly parent. I do. In fact, according to a recent Forbes article, more than 60 million families are caring for an aging or disabled family member. And do you know who does 80-90 percent of that caregiving? Women. Fair Pay. Women are at least partial breadwinners in more and more households, and the sole breadwinner in an estimated 23 percent of families. And yet, women still earn, on average, just .77 [...]













Woman Fired After Complaining About Sexist Jokes
Last Sunday, Adria Richards was at PyCon, a technology conference, on behalf of her then employer, email company SendGrid. Two men sitting behind her made comments Richards found to be sexist and inappropriate for a professional event and so she took a picture of the men and tweeted it along with this tweet, “Not cool. Jokes about forking repo’s in a sexual way and “big” dongles. Right behind me #pycon” Then she tweeted, “Can someone talk to these guys about their conduct? I’m in lightning talks, top right near stage, 10 rows back #pycon” According to reports, PyCon staffers saw the tweets and escorted the two men out of the exhibit. Conference organizers tweeted, “Thank you @adriarichards for bringing the inappropriate comments to our attention. We’ve dealt with the situation.” A few days later, one of the men was fired from his job. Richards was threatened and harassed on Twitter with death threats, requests for her to kill herself, and many other ugly, ugly comments. And then, Richards was fired. SendGrid explained its decision in a blog post writing, “To be clear, SendGrid supports the right to report inappropriate behavior, whenever and wherever it occurs. What we do not support [...]
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