In the 1970s, after it became illegal to discriminate based on race, some employers responded by imposing high school education requirements for blue-collar jobs. Today, employers who want to keep women out of “men’s jobs” do something similar: they wait until workers get pregnant, and then deny them “light duty,” like desk work for a police officer, for example, or a transfer from the warehouse to the phone bank, making them unable to perform their jobs.

Almost two years ago, I wrote my first blog post. As soon as it went live, I thought, I have quite possibly just ruined my entire life.

This was about a year after I went home sick from my job and then never went back. The whole experience still felt painfully raw. I was filled with shame for letting people down, for abandoning the career I’d worked so hard at. I didn’t know how to explain the fact that I was so completely burned out that it wasn’t a choice to stop working, it was a physical necessity. Like most professional women, I had always taken great pains to appear confident, together, in control, and I didn’t know where to begin with the truth. Instead I told people that I was “just really exhausted,” as if I needed a lot of sleep, not a year of medication and intense therapy.

Excitement continues to build about the new Work and Family Researchers Network (WFRN), the international membership organization of interdisciplinary work and family researchers.  We’ve had a terrific response to our inaugural conference, Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Work and Family, June 14-16, 2012 in New York City.  Over 700 participants from over 30 countries will be on the program.  In addition to attendees from Europe, Canada and the U.S., scholars from Japan, India, Chile, and Australia will be well represented.  Presenters comprise various disciplines of work and family scholarship, including sociology, management, psychology, family studies, political science, and economics.  The conference will feature a number of innovative formats–sessions on mentoring, publishing, incubating ideas and research collaborations, as

Another smart post from our friends at Role/Reboot. -Eds.

I’m on the board of a small, parenting-related nonprofit organization, a board comprised of smart, thoughtful women who are mostly mothers of small children (and one dad, though our father pool is growing). In addition to our full-time parenting jobs, pretty much all of us have professional jobs, or are students. We’re all juggling a lot of balls, and we all take on this additional volunteer job as board members because we believe that the work of this organization is world-changing.

Photo credit garryknight/Flickr

Recently, we’ve endured a spate of board resignations. Each ex-member articulated a variant on the same theme, something to the effect of:

American mothers are hard-hit by the tough economy, with 42 percent more women than men living in poverty and single moms especially vulnerable. Yet women work valiantly to sustain families, and remain thankful that they can manage at all.

In a new study on American families released today, the toll of tough times is painfully clear. “Parents across groups express strong feelings of frustration and disappointment with how things are going for people like them today,” says the report, which was commissioned by Ascend, the family economic security program at the Aspen Institute.

Lilly Dong

I’m a mom of a two-and-a-half year old and a three month old and I have a full time job.  If I have any extra “me” time that isn’t spent shirking the gym and the growing piles of laundry, I’ll probably spend it sleeping.  So a TV show has to be super appealing to make it on my very small “must see” list.

Enter The Good Wife.  Oh how I love thee. It’s probably second only to my love of AMC’s Mad Men. I love them both, in large part, because of their strong female characters who are dealing with realistic life pressures for the times in which the shows take place.

Sunday’s episode of The Good Wife (Parenting Made Easy) was particularly appealing to me.  Although the primary plot was focused on Alicia’s worry about whether her daughter had been abducted, I was mostly drawn to watching Alicia’s legal nemesis, Louis Canning (the incomparable Michael J. Fox) attempt to woo her away to his firm by touting the family-friendly workplace flexibility that he provides and himself values as a father.  He tells Alicia she’ll be able to telecommute and spend more time with her kids.  We may be cutthroat, he says, but we’re always home by 5pm.

1. Don’t choose what to do. (Choose what NOT to do – quickly.)

My career has been propelled most by the times I started down a path, realized it was not a good fit, and quickly chose NOT to do it anymore. Even when that decision was painful, risky or counter-intuitive.

Four months in, I realized I didn’t want to spend seven years getting a Ph.D. and then be a professor. I walked away from a fellowship, and walked into a K12 teaching job that introduced me to strategic planning, education and technology – three areas I found passion and would become constant throughout my career.

A job I moved across country for turned out to be far slower paced than my energy level required. So I left mid-year for a position at an Internet start-up, and spent four years in the Internet boom getting an on-the-job Ph.D. in organizational change.

2. Gender doesn’t matter. (Having kids matters a lot.)

Not that I needed another reason to be grateful for many of the workplace benefits my current employer provides but I can’t help but be incredibly thankful that during Connecticut’s “snowtober” as it’s being called, my employer has allowed several of her employees the ability to work from home, be flexible with our work hours and has even said we can bring our children into the office if need be.

If you haven’t heard, Connecticut (and surrounding states), got hit hard by a snow storm right before Halloween. Most of the state has been without power for 7 days now, and our neighborhoods look like a tornado blew through and knocked all the trees (and power lines) down. Considering it’s hovering around 20-30 degrees at night, the fact that we have no heat in our home means I’m camped out at my parents’ house, who fortunately do have power and heat. I’m even more fortunate that I’m allowed to work remotely until power is restored in my area.

Would you believe me if I told you that we could take a big step to combating climate change simply by staying home from work? Rather, I should say, staying home and working.

Call it “telecommuting.” Call it “virtual work.” Call it “working from home.” Call it “netWork.” I’m going to call it “telework,” and here’s how it could be both a key climate solution and also an incredible business boost.

Last year, I co-wrote a book called The Custom-Fit Workplace, which is about how everyone needs work that fits their life, and how employers are well-served to create a workplace that respects their workers lives. In doing so, they’re rewarded with more productive, resilient, and profitable businesses.

After the book was published, I was speaking with a small gathering of climate change leaders. During this chat I realized that one component of the “custom-fit work initiative” could well be the biggest short term opportunity we have to address climate change. This component is, of course, telework.