The 2019 State of Women Owned Businesses Report

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To better understand how the economic growth of the past few years has influenced the dynamism of women-owned businesses, the 2019 State of Women-Owned Businesses Report compared 2019 to 2014 and 2018. The report looks at trends in the number of firms, employment and revenue across various factors, including but not limited to, the following: Nationally, Race and ethnicity, Sidepreneur, Company size, Industry, State, Top 50, metropolitan areas

Women in the Construction Workplace: Providing Equitable Safety and Health Protection

Sophie Bierly

As increasing numbers of women enter the construction trades, concerns about their health and safety are growing. In addition to the primary safety and health hazards faced by all construction workers, there are safety and health issues specific to female construction workers. The small percentage of females within the construction trades and the serious health and safety problems unique to female construction workers have a circular effect. Safety and health problems in construction create barriers to women entering and remaining in this field. In turn, the small numbers of women workers on construction worksites foster an environment in which these safety and health problems arise or continue.

A $700 Billion Missed Opportunity

Sophie Bierly

Over the past 10 years, achieving gender balance in financial services has remained a challenge across Europe and worldwide, with the industry still male-dominated, particularly at the senior level. While there are now more women in senior leadership roles globally than ever before, progress has been incremental, and there is still a long way to go — something made clear by Oliver Wyman’s new Women in Financial Services Report 2020. Increasingly, this lack of gender balance is to the industry’s commercial detriment.

8 Steps for Retaining Women of Color Lawyers

Sophie Bierly

2Civility FEBRUARY 25, 2021 JAYNE REARDON  A lack of diversity and inclusion has plagued the legal profession for decades. Despite incremental progress in hiring, law firms haven’t been successful in retaining women of color lawyers in the associate ranks or promoting them to partner. While the COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare the stark realities of the legal profession’s diversity, equity, and …

Discrimination against Mothers is the Strongest Form of Workplace Gender Discrimination: Lessons from US Caregiver Discrimination Law

Sophie Bierly

Work-family reconciliation is an integral part of labor law as the result of two major demographic changes: the rise of the two-earner family, and the pressing concern of elder care as Baby Boomers age. Despite these changes, most European and American workplaces still assume that the committed worker has a family life secured so that family responsibilities do not distract from work obligations. This way of organizing employment around a breadwinner husband and a caregiver housewife, which arose in the late eighteenth century, is severely outdated today. The result is workplace-workforce mismatch: Many employers still have workplaces perfectly designed for the workforce of 1960. Labour lawyers in Europe and the United States have developed different legal strategies to reduce the work-family conflicts that arise from this mismatch. The Europeans’ focus is on public policy, based on a European political tradition of communal social supports — a tradition the United States lacks. Advocates in the United States, faced with the most family-hostile public policy in the developed world, have developed legal remedies based on the American political tradition of individualism, using anti-discrimination law to eliminate employment discrimination against mothers and other adults with caregiving responsibilities. This article explores both the social science documenting that motherhood is the strongest trigger for gender bias in the workplace and the American cases addressing “family responsibilities discrimination.”

From Mastery to Accountability: Cultural Humility as an Alternative to Cultural Competence

Sophie Bierly

Cultural competency has been a long held ideal for social work educators and practitioners. However, definitions and approaches to cultural competency vary widely depending on worldview, discipline, and practice context. Within social work and beyond, cultural competency has been challenged for its failure to account for the structural forces that shape individuals’ experiences and opportunities. In contrast, the concept ofcultural humility takes into account the fluidity of culture and challenges both individuals and institutions to address inequalities. This article takes a critical look at cultural competence as a concept, examining its explicit and implicit assumptions, and the impact these assumptions have on practitioners. It suggests that cultural humility may offer social work an alternative framework as it acknowledges power differentials between provider and client and challenges institutional-level barriers. The authors advocate a move from a focus on mastery in understanding ‘others’ to a framework that requires personal accountability in challenging institutional barriers that impact marginalized communities. Cultural humility, while a promising concept, has not been fully explored in social work. Therefore, the authors present a conceptual model of cultural competency along with strategic questions for providers and organizations to integrate into social work practice and education.

Better Together: A Model for Women and LGBTQ Equality in the Workplace

Sophie Bierly

Much has been achieved in terms of human rights for women and people of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, and queer (LGBTQ) community. However, human resources management (HRM) initiatives for gender equality in the workplace focus almost exclusively on white, heterosexual, cisgender women, leaving the problems of other gender, and social minorities out of the analysis. This article develops an integrative model of gender equality in the workplace for HRM academics and practitioners. First, it analyzes relevant antecedents and consequences of gender-based discrimination and harassment (GBDH) in the workplace. Second, it incorporates the feminist, queer, and intersectional perspectives in the analysis. Third, it integrates literature findings about women and the LGBTQ at work, making the case for an inclusive HRM. The authors underscore the importance of industry-university collaboration and offer a starters’ toolkit that includes suggestions for diagnosis, intervention, and applied research on GBDH. Finally, avenues for future research are identified to explore gendered practices that hinder the career development of women and the LGBTQ in the workplace.