Sheila Bapat is an attorney and writer covering economic and gender justice. Her work has appeared in Jacobin, Salon, Reuters, Slate, Alternet, Truthout, the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Labor and Employment Law, PolicyMatters, and the Center for Women Policy Studies' series, "Reproductive Laws for the 21st Century." Her article about the US domestic workers' movement is forthcoming in The Believer magazine. Sheila holds a JD from the University of Pennsylvania School of Law.
Those who insult the middle class and the poor are ignorant about gender and the economic lives of women in the United States.
Advocacy for gender parity on US corporate boards appeals to the American capitalist. The problem is, even this pro-business strategy is moving the needle at a snail’s pace.
While laws may not be sufficient on their own — laws never mean much without the advocates who ensure their enforcement — they are a necessary step in improving the labor conditions of domestic workers.
A few small public programs throughout the country are helping poor fathers who are interested in achieving financial independence and, at last, crawling out from under the albatross of child support arrears.
A new Treasury Department rule brings to light the tension between helping single mothers support their children while also ensuring poor debtors are not rendered economically helpless by enforcement provisions.
Demand for microloans is increasing among low-income American women, but federal economic policy is not adequately supporting this demand.
An under-the-radar provision of the Affordable Care Act, the Pregnancy Assistance Fund, demonstrates the economic justice potential of health reform.
Trends connecting income, education spending, and achievement send troubling signals about how economic class affects the educational achievement of children—and what it means for your child’s life if you simply can’t afford what the Joneses have.
Few will ever hear of Amber Reeves, a pregnant truck driver who was fired after requesting accommodations in her work duties. She couldn’t perform her regular duties, so her employer terminated her. Unglamorous and unprotected by the law, pregnant women in labor-intensive jobs often find themselves in this kind of predicament.
A woman is publicly executed in Afghanistan to settle a “dispute” between two Taliban officials. This gross demonstration of the everyday violence faced by women in Afghanistan comes just days after the U.S. declared the country as a major non-NATO U.S. ally and 70 countries pledged to provide aid.
