Many employers offer family leave, but it is often unpaid, causing families in poverty to dip into savings, borrow money, put off paying their bills, or even enroll in public benefits to avoid further debt. Title IX (9) prohibits discrimination based on gender in the workplace, but Title IX does not address the needs of working mothers. Over 40 percent of working new mothers are forced to take unpaid leave, and a quarter of these working new mothers either have to quit or are let go from their jobs due to their absences. Lack of workplace policies like sick days, contributed to an additional 5,000,000 cases of influenza-like illness during the H1N1 of 2009.
The FMLA or The Family and Medical Leave Act allows eligible employees who work for companies that the Act applies to take unpaid, job-protected leave for family and or medical reasons. As stated on US Department of Labor’s website (2015), a covered employer must have 50 or more employees in 20 or more work weeks in the current or preceding calendar year, including a joint employer or successor in interest to a covered employer. It may also be a public agency which includes local, state or Federal agencies, regardless of the number of employees that it employs. Eligible employees work for a covered
 If a doctor or health care provider says their patient is sick and unable to work during their pregnancy, they may be able to get up to 12 weeks off without pay under this law.
While it is true that Title IX has allowed for more equality in the world of sports, some members of society do not accept it and some men consider it reverse discrimination.
What if you were told that there may be a law created intended to remove discrimination between the sexes in education and sports, or that in the matter of athletics and job occupations both men and women are given equal opportunities? Would you then agree or disagree with the ideology that both sexes are still treated different even though this law was created and the opportunities that were promised aren’t precisely indistinguishable? Title IX is not an accurate protection of sexual discrimination\, it doesn't give equal opportunities, and is unjust as far as benefits between male and female sports. Although this law allows men and women to participate in the same sports and educational fields, it
Title IX was first introduced in Congress by its head author and sponsor, Senator Birch Bayh. On June 23, 1972, President Richard Nixon signed into law Title IX of the Education Amendment of 1972 in response to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, requiring equal opportunity for males and females in educational programs - including athletic programs. According to the United States Justice Department, Title IX is a comprehensive federal law which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in any type of federally funded education program or activity. The main purpose of Title IX is to avoid using federal money to support sex discrimination within education programs and to provide United States citizens with effective protection.
When people hear the word “feminist”, they think of women’s rights. When people hear “Title IX”, they often think of the same thing. This is because Title IX is a nickname for the Education Amendments passed on June 23, 1972 as a part of the gender equality movement. The Amendments were passed to ensure gender equality in educational institutions and other establishments receiving federal grants or funding.
The Family and Medical Leave Act was enacted by Congress on February 5, 1993, and it is public law 103-3. This law allows for a person to leave work in certain situations without losing his/her job. An eligible employees must have worked for the employer for at least 12 months and at least completed 1250 hours of service. An employee is able to leave work for up to 12 weeks for any of the following reasons: the employee expects a baby in his/her immediate family, the employee expects an adopted child in his/her immediate family, the employee has to take care of an ill family member which includes spouse, parent or his/her own children, and/or the employee has a serious medical
The Urban Institute published a case study that promotes the creation of national paid family leave policy in the United States. In the study, it is shown that this issue has been debated countless times in the past. George H.W. Bush even vetoed an unpaid family leave act during his presidency. This displays the struggles of enacting policy relating to this issue. The lack of a national paid family leave program in the US has left working mothers with three options: “return to work immediately after childbirth, quit employment, or take unpaid leave” (Urban Institute, 2017, p.3). The issue with these options include, loss of pay, unemployment, or the lack of parental presence in a child’s early development. Moreover, although some private companies offer paid leave, less educated and lower income mother have little access to this paid leave, which exacerbates their financial instability, keeping them in a lower societal class. This study found that not only is the current system is inadequate, but it is also inequitable, which causes financial hardships across the nation. According to the study, there has even been a 32% decrease in income after childbirth. Although this is the current situation, some states have enacted a statewide paid family leave program, which displays
Although current federal and state level legislation guarantee some protections, these policies do not cover all new parents. Parents must have worked a minimum of 5 months while contributing to State Disability Insurance to receive 55% of their salary during 6 weeks of their parental leave, and must have worked with an employer for 1 year to quality for 12 weeks of unpaid leave (“About Paid Family Leave (PFL),” n.d.). Parental leave is not accessible to all adults in the United States because of these requirements, and therefore makes early parenting even more challenging for working adults. Nationally, the trend for mothers on maternal leave has stagnated, although the US economy has expanded (Zagorsky, 2017).
The lack of a paid parental leave law in the country does not necessarily mean that it is absent in the U.S. labor market. Some generous and more progressive companies do recognize the importance of the leave to employees and do offer it. According to the Employee Benefits Survey of 2015, 21% of employers nationally offer some paid maternity leave while 17% offer some paid paternity/adoption leave. However, about a fifth don’t have any kind of protected maternity, paternity, or adoptive leave. (Ray, 8; Time, n. pag.)
Recently women’s rights and women’s equality in the workplace has come back to the fore as a topic for discussion in government agencies and the United Nations. Whilst this is a very important topic, when it comes to time off from work when a new child is born, women in the US have some provision, whereas men have none.
In this excerpt, Cochran disagrees with the body of criticism which finds The Sun Also Rises overtly cynical, focusing instead on the circularity of the human condition.
Pregnancy and early child development is a fundamental aspect of human society, and is pertinent to the development of a successfully functioning community. The developmental and social progress of any civilization relies on children, as they will compose the future working population. Therefore, a mother or father’s involvement in the child’s development is of extreme importance, which is why family leave has been implemented all over the world. Family leave refers to the period of time granted to the employee to care for their newborn child. As communities evolve economically, financial stability is necessary, for what is perceived to be socially successful for a child’s development, which is why paid family leave is popular throughout the world’s nations. However, ABC News reports that “the U.S. is only one of three countries in the world that don't offer paid maternity leave” (Kim, 2015); the same is true for paternity leave. The United States government has an interesting track record dealing with family leave, but in order to analyze what the US government and advocacy groups have done to solve this issue, there first needs to be an understanding on why this issue is so difficult to resolve. The arguments that support and oppose paid family leave in the United States are equally valid, therefore causing a stalemate in the attempted policy making of legislative bodies.
Sex-based wage discrimination is against the law, as is stated in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The same Act prohibits pregnancy discrimination and states that employers cannot refuse to employ a woman because of pregnancy or terminate her, force her to go on leave at an arbitrary point during pregnancy or penalize her because of pregnancy in reinstatement rights credit for previous service, and accumulated seniority. Family responsibilities typically still fall more heavily on women, and neither society nor employers have found good ways to mesh those with job demands. Employers see parental leaves as a lack of commitment to the job and therefore more likely not to give promotions to the female workers (Kleiner & Kuta, 2001:45-47). Women can get equal treatment, but mostly when they behave like traditional men and leave the primary family responsibilities at home. Many women choose to take time off or to work part-time to be with their children rather than stay on the job and mainly because of lack of day care and flexible job options (Kleiner & Kuta, 2001:45-47). Some women drop out of work force for as long as two or three years,
Despite the advantages of paid parental leave, the United States trails behind other developed countries in guaranteeing these options. In fact, America is currently “one of the only two nations (the other being Papua New Guinea) that do not guarantee paid maternity leave to new mothers” (Baum II and Ruhm 333). Last year, according to the Pew Research Center, only fourteen percent of workers had access to paid family leave (Desilver). Instead of choosing to extend paid leave for their employees, many American businesses opt to offer unpaid family leave that is available to almost ninety