Tag Archives: Employment Opportunity

Lesbians Who Tech‘s Edie Windsor Coding Scholarship Looks To Have More Queer Women Shaping The Future Of Technology

According to a study, only 26% of computing jobs in the United Stated were held by women — down dramatically from 36% in 1990.

Lesbians Who Tech is looking to break that statistic, and challenging the straight male-dominated landscape of technology.

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This week they launched a Kickstarter campaign  that will allow 12 or more lesbian and queer-identified women to go to the coding school of their choice.

Lesbians Who Tech‘s Edie Windsor Coding Scholarship Fund is part of a larger push to have more women — especially queer-identified women — shaping the future of code.

 

Vanessa Newman of Lesbians Who Tech told The Huffington Post,

Imagine what apps and software would look like if they were made by women, queer women, women of color. Imagine how integrating that kind of inclusivity into [tech] would create a more inclusive, accessible society and tech industry for all of us. That’s why being able to fund and provide this type of opportunity for queer women to attend coding school is so important, if not vital. We literally have the power to change the face of tech, if we can lift each other up, over the privileges and barriers to entry that come with learning the essential skills.”

Following the completion of the Kickstarter, the twelve or more lesbian and queer-identified women to receive the funding will be chosen by a committee of advisors after an application process.

Interested parties can apply after the Kickstarter campaign has been completed by checking out the Lesbians Who Tech website.


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Campaigners Calculate Women Will Be ‘Working For Free Until The End If The Year’ Due Gender Wage Gap

The gap in average pay gap between women and men is around 14.2%. Which means, if you’re a woman who works full time you will effectively be working for free from now until January.

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So today is Equal Pay Day – the point in the year at which the average woman in full-time employment is said to stop earning, in effect, compared with male counterparts.

The date changes each year and 2015’s Equal Pay Day is five days later than 2014’s, indicating that the pay gap has narrowed slightly.

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Sam Smethers, chief executive of gender equality charity the Fawcett Society, said at the current rate of progress it would take 50 years to close the gender pay gap.

Women should not have to wait that long.”

The ONS figures show the gender gap is widest at the age of 50-59, when it rises to 20.5%.

Lesbians Really Do Earn More Than Straight Women (But That’s Not Really A Good Thing)

In the world of work there lays a clear biased – women earn less than men. Caucasian folk earn more than ethnic groups. And gay men, and transgender people make less than their heteronormative friends.

Yet there’s one minority group that flies in the face of conventional wisdom with a positive wage gap: lesbians.

Lesbians in Western countries suffer many types of discrimination, but being underpaid is not one of them.

Why? Well a new study by the University of Melbourne and San Diego State University found gay women earn more because they are better at “leaning in.”

Nick Drydakis, co-author of the study and senior lecturer in economics at the University of Anglia, also suggests this is because lesbians often know early in life that they will not marry into a traditional household where a male could provide for them. So they invest more in themselves, study longer than heterosexual women and make more career-oriented decisions.

Good for them, right? Not necessarily. While the lesbian pay premium is certainly good news for us hardworking women, it may also be due to the systematic discrimination against other groups.

Mothers, for example, earn less than childless women. And lesbians have fewer children than heterosexual married women.

Drydakis says

This might make employers more interested in promoting lesbians, who are less likely to move in and out of the labour market.”

He also suggests that employers, colleagues and consumers often favour personality traits traditionally associated with men — like ambition, authority and pragmatism.


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Lesbians might also benefit if they exhibit more of those attributes than their heterosexual counterparts or gay male co-workers.

Research however did find that the wage premium was lower for those lesbians who had previously been in heterosexual marriages.

Jeffrey Waddoups, who conducted this particular study and is the graduate coordinator for economics at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, explained

This is because the typical household division of labour for married couples focuses on career advancement of men.”

To be sure, we still face other types of discrimination in and out of the workplace.

And research indicates the marketplace continues to benefit primarily men or women who are perceived as being more “manly.”

So the key is to be assertive, stay longer in school and select a lifelong partner who understands career advancement is not a male privilege.

Discrimination Against LGBT Employees is Illegal in America

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has decided this week that workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation is illegal by existing laws.

The landmark ruling could now extend to new rights for LGBT Americans.

The decision was rooted in Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which bans employment discrimination “based on race, colour, religion, sex and national origin.”

Before now, courts have generally held that sexual orientation is not protected by this clause because the term is not explicitly listed and interpreting it as such was not the intention of the legislators behind the law.

But in its 3-2 vote ruling, the commission reasons that any employment decision based on someone’s sexual orientation must also inherently take into account his or her gender, pushing the question under the umbrella of the law’s language.

The decision reads

For example, assume that an employer suspends a female employee for displaying a photo of her female spouse on her desk, but does not suspend a male employee for displaying a photo of his female spouse.

‘Sexual orientation’ as a concept cannot be defined or understood without reference to sex.”

The case in question was a complaint filed against transportation secretary Anthony Foxx in which a Florida air traffic controller alleges he was passed over for a job because he is gay.

The ruling is not definitive until it is solidified by legislation or a Supreme Court decision, but it does carry significant weight in courts across the country.

The decision claimed that earlier circuit court rulings on the matter have been grounded in “dated” precedents without any additional analysis. More recent legal precedents in the same courts, the commission goes on, have recognised that

gender stereotyping — which includes anti-gay remarks — is considered sex discrimination.

As Time points out, this is the same logic that Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts used when considering same-sex marriage earlier this year before ultimately opposing it.

Justice John Roberts said in April,

If Sue loves Joe and Tom loves Joe, Sue can marry him and Tom can’t. And the difference is based upon their different sex. Why isn’t that a straightforward question of sexual discrimination?”

In 2012, the commission ruled in a similar case that the same law protected gender identity when a transgender woman claimed she was denied a job at the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives because of her transition.

Human Rights Campaign president Chad Griffen praised the decision but called on legislators to bolster it and other LGBT civil rights issues by setting them into law.
Griffen said in a statement

While an important step, it also highlights the need for a comprehensive federal law permanently and clearly banning LGBT discrimination beyond employment to all areas of American life,”