NEWSWOMEN IN THE WORKFORCE

This article cross-posted from The Lattice Group blog. Liz Kofman is the co-founder of The Lattice Group, a non-profit that conducts research and sparks dialogue about work-life issues from a Gen Y perspective, and a PhD candidate in Sociology at UCLA.

There is absolutely nothing I love more than a good deal. So when the stock market tumbled on Monday, I went bargain hunting for stocks.

(If you haven’t invested a dime yet, because you are either scared or indifferent, here are two words that should change your mind: compound interest. Here is a good primer on why investing young is important, and another link about how to start.)

One company that caught my eye was Zipcar, the car-sharing service. Sure, they haven’t made a dime in ten years but I think this kind of operation takes a while to get going, they have great name recognition, and they just expanded to the UK. Brits don’t mind small, silly looking cars so I think things are looking up. While doing my research, I glanced at their Officers and Directors. Here they are (after the jump):

You’d think a corporation that owns multiple brands catering solely to women would have a female-heavy board of directors. But for clothing giant Urban Outfitters Inc. — which owns Free People, Anthropologie, and BHLDN — the opposite is true. Seven people serve on the company’s board of directors. Guess how many are women: None.

Guess how many are people of color: None.

In May, Calvert Investments, which promotes socially responsible investing, urged Urban Outfitters to consider including women and minorities on its board in the future. The result? Urban Outfitters rebuffed them, denying that they had a diversity problem, according to Calvert senior analyst Aditi Mohapatra.

To be clear, Calvert didn’t ask Urban Outfitters to actually appoint women and minorities to its board, but to simply consider doing so in the future. That the company reportedly refused to even think about including women and people of color at a later date sends a strong message: diversity isn’t important. In 2011, that’s unacceptable, which is why Mohapatra launched a petition on Change.org demanding that Urban Outfitters diversify its all-male, all-white board.

I'm a 20-year-old queer Canadian woman who has been reading comics since I was a kid. Comics mean a lot to me: the characters, the legacy, the expression through word and image --  graphic storytelling is a beautiful art. But the difficult thing about comics is its very "boys-only" attitude. Interacting with male fans is a challenge -- often your opinions are disregarded, because surely a woman couldn't know the first thing about comics.

I've spoken to a lot of women who have been put off by male comic book shop workers who belittle or patronize them. Experiences like this really discourage women from reading and buying comics, costing companies like DC Comics thousands, if not millions of dollars in profit. Unfortunately, DC reinforces this thinking by ignoring the outcry from its fanbase -- "more women in comics." When women see other women creating comics, they feel empowered. It encourages women to read, to buy, and to maybe one day contribute to the comic book industry.

The number of women working for DC has been hovering around 10% in the last few years -- similar to their adversary company, Marvel. But this September, DC will be rebooting its universe and giving its characters (and creative teams) an overhaul. Many of the characters that will be erased are female, which in and of itself is a tragedy, but in addition to that, what few female creators DC has employed will also be cut from the team. Only 2 out of 100-odd people DC employs as ongoing creators will be women: Gail Simone, who will be writing Batgirl, and Amy Reeder, who will be doing pencils on Batwoman.

Walmart's been all over the news this week, in response to the Supreme Court decision that its female employees cannot bring a class action lawsuit against sex discrimination. But as disturbing as Walmart's record is on discriminating against women working in their stores, there's another area for major concern that has received little media attention. I'm talking about factories that produces clothes for Walmart stores, where women are controlled through debt bondage and regularly raped.

Walmart's not the only well-known brand putting tainted clothes from Classic Fashion factories in its stores (although it is the biggest buyer) -- Macy's, Target, Kohl's, and Hanes all source from the same abusive Jordan factories. An Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights report chronicles a tale of 13 to 18.5 hour workdays, 6 to 7 days a week, for minimal pay and poor living quarters. Thousands of female workers, most immigrants from Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, or India, face the threat of deportation if they lose or leave their jobs.

This is only the tip of the iceberg. Managers grope and fondle the employees regularly, ostensibly to get them to work faster, and, even more horrifying, many repeatedly rape their workers. "Kamala," deported after she became pregnant (a typical occurrence), describes her assault at the hands of a quality control manager: "I was molested in every way… That man tortured me. He took a lot of sexual advantages from me… I had to fulfill everything he desired because I was placed in an extremely vulnerable situation and intimidated… My whole body is in pain… I cannot face my mother and father. I am destroyed. I cannot even change clothes before my mother because Priyantha has destroyed me. I have teeth marks all over my body."

On April 12, the Wall Street Journal decided to honor Equal Pay Day with an anti-fair pay oped. While Sen. Barbara Mikulski and Rep. Rosa DeLauro were reintroducing the Paycheck Fairness Act, WSJ devoted its pages to wage gap denialism, courtesy of Executive Director Carrie Lukas of the conservative Independent Women's Forum. Though the Census Bureau and Bureau of Labor Statistics have calculated that women make 23 cents less on the dollar, the editors at WSJ didn't see fit to present a balanced editorial or even a companion oped to the inaccurate anti-fair pay complaint.

But the Women's Media Center isn't letting WSJ get away with this biased coverage, misrepresenting the issues women face when it comes to equal pay. They've launched a call to action to hold the WSJ accountable, including a Change.org petition telling the Editorial Page Editors to run "fair and balanced coverage" of the wage gap "in order to adhere to the high journalistic standards WSJ attempts to embody." WMC also helpfully suggests that there are "several members of the National Coalition for Pay Equity to choose from" in looking around for somebody who can provide an oped.

Yesterday was International Domestic Workers Day, and you don't have to look very far to find hardworking domestic workers facing exploitation and in need of your support. In America, labor law excludes domestic workers from basic protections, like the right to sick days, overtime pay, or notice of termination. The nannies and nurses who take care of our children, our sick, our elderly should hold a respected position in our society -- in our families too -- but instead they're often underpaid and overworked. It's all up to the whim of the employer whether they're treated fairly.

But California domestic workers say: no more. Stephanie Hallett at Ms. Magazine's blog reports that a rally yesterday called for the passage of a state bill that could change all this for them: a Domestic Workers Bill of Rights. This move has precedent in New York's decision last year to pass their own DWBOR, which came about after years of effort by organizations like like Domestic Workers United and the National Domestic Workers Alliance, who are also involved in the California push.

Seventeen, happily engaged, and pregnant, Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez's life was just beginning when she collapsed under the brutal California sun. Forced to work nine hours without water or rest in the shade, her body gave up and she fell into her finance's arms. Even then, her employer, Merced Farm Labor, showed more concern for covering themselves than for her safety: the workers who took her to a local clinic were told to claim that Maria had passed out while exercising. Though clinic staff rushed her to the hospital upon seeing the dangerous state she was in, it was too late: she died of a 108 degree fever. The adequate punishment for those who caused her death? Forty hours community service, apparently.

That's the sentence San Joaquin County District Attorney James P. Willett is considering in a plea deal for Merced owner Maria De Los Angeles Colunga, who was charged with involuntary manslaughter. Safety coordinator Elias Armenta, also charged, faces 400 hours community service and a $1000 fine — still nothing in comparison to snatching away a young life. But Maria's family and other supporters aren't willing to let the California justice system act like her life didn't matter. At a press conference organized by United Farm Workers (UFW), where Maria's fiance and the uncle she lived with appeared, they made it clear that nothing short of jail time will provide justice in the beloved teenage girl's case and send a message that the lives of farm workers are not disposable.

After over 50,000 Change.org members sent emails to 1-800-Flowers asking them to offer petals untainted by exploitation, child labor, sexual assault, and slavery, the company has stepped up to the plate and become a leader for ethical sourcing practices overnight. In time for Mother's Day, you'll be able to send that special lady in your life a bouquet of fair trade flowers courtesy of America's largest floral retailer.

1-800-Flowers told Change.org that they had indeed offered fair trade flowers in the past, but canceled the offering due to a lack of consumer response. With tens of thousands of emails from Change.org members demonstrating that people really do care about the ethics of their blossoms, they've decided to give it another go. The company has agreed to work with labor rights organizations and design an industry code of conduct, and also launched a brand-new page on their site to provide consumers with information about where they currently source their flowers, including info on social and environmental certifications. You can thanks them via their Facebook page or tweeting @1800Flowers.

Ah, love is in the air ... Valentine's Day is fast approaching, and if you have a special someone in your life, you might be considering one of the most traditional displays of love: a bouquet of red roses. You might be planning to get them delivered by America's largest floral retailer, 1-800-Flowers. But is that the scent of slavery on those petals?

Amanda Kloer reports on End Human Trafficking that as preparations for V-Day gear up, the conditions get even worse for already mistreated cut flower industry workers, the majority of whom are women. 1-800-Flowers sources its beautiful plants from Africa and South and Central America, where forced labor, child labor, exploitation, and sexual abuse are all problems. For instance, more than 50% of female workers in Columbia and Ecuador (where 20% of the labor force is made up of children) report being sexually harassed or assaulted, often while working 80 hours a week without overtime pay. Two-thirds of workers in the cut flower industry have severe health problems as a result of handling pesticides without protection.

In near 100 degree heat, with only contaminated drinking water nearby, women work 60-hour weeks sewing the NFL fan jerseys sold across the nation in preparation for the big day: Super Bowl Sunday. Fired for complaining, abused for existing, these El Salvadorean sweatshop workers see little of the $25 a pop you shell out to display team pride. How little? Try eight cents a shirt.

The clothing they make at Ocean Sky Factory is for familiar brands: NFL, Reebok, Puma, Old Navy (GAP), Columbia, Talbots, and Penguin (Munsingwear). GAP, you might remember, was also the biggest buyer of garments from a Bangladeshi factory where a couple dozen exploited workers died in a fire — one that could have easily been prevented with adequate safety measures — and GAP, alongside the other brands who sourced from that factory, gave in to Change.org members' demands for safety protocols and compensation for injured workers and families of the deceased. It's time for tens of thousands of concerned Change.orgers to rally once again.