Women's Insitute for Science, Equity and Race

09/30/2026

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of participating on a panel titled "Menopause to Retirement: Supporting Women's Later Working Years and Beyond" at the Power Summit hosted by the Institute for Women's Policy Research, alongside Kathryn Anne Edwards and Courtney Polenick. I reminded the audience that the productivity loss from menopause symptoms is a loss in perpetuity, and it will grow as women's human capital and labor force participation grow.

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of participating on a panel titled "Menopause to Retirement: Supporting Women's Later Working Years and Beyond" at the Power+ Summit hosted by the Institute for Women's Policy Research, alongside Kathryn Anne Edwards and Courtney Polenick.  

09/24/2026

Intra-Ethnic and Gender Wage Penalties
Policy solutions that rely exclusively on "upskilling" and educational attainment may not close the earnings gap. We must couple workforce development with equal pay enforcement, pay transparency legislation, and workplace desegregation to target the specific occupational and credential sorting. -

09/16/2026

The poverty data provided poverty rates by s*x: the 2025 poverty rate for men and women both had statistically significant decreases, 0.4 and 0.6 percentage points, respectively. Hispanics were the only race/ethnic group with a statistically significant decrease in poverty rates, 1.2 percentage points. As the diversity of the U.S. continues to grow, the Census reports poverty rates at the intersection of race and s*x.https://mailchi.mp/wiserpolicy/poverty-fell-except-for-the-group-automation-is-coming-for

09/09/2026

Yesterday, pre-orders opened for our new volume, Black Women in the U.S. Economy: The Hardest Working Woman, edited by Nina Banks and me, and officially releasing on September 29- https://mailchi.mp/wiserpolicy/the-hardest-working-woman

09/03/2026

Labor Day is the unofficial end of summer. The pools close, amusement parks shift to a weekend schedule, hotel rates decrease (for those at the beach), and tourism dollars plummet. But Labor Day is about celebrating "the social and economic achievements of American workers". The Americans whose labor is the strength that creates the prosperity and well-being of these United States of America.
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08/27/2026

Resending Working 9 to 5 with tables -

08/26/2026

Tributes to Dolly Parton's legacy will play songs such as "Jolene," "I Will Always Love You," and "9 to 5. Each of her songs will resonate differently with fans and people who didn’t know they were fans (me). But on this 106th anniversary of Women's Equality Day, the song that I keep singing in my head is “9 to 5.” During the pandemic, I learned that the movie “9 to 5” was based on the nonprofit 9to5.org, which was created to demand better working conditions for clerical workers. https://mailchi.mp/wiserpolicy/working-9-to-5

07/22/2026

As a teenager, Lundy, a violinist, had enrolled at the majority-white Robert E. Lee High School. “Dixie [iconography] was pervasive,” she said. There was no orchestra program at Jack Yates High School, which her siblings and George Floyd had attended—or any black high school for that matter. It was the ninetieth birth year of William L. Dawson, whose “Negro Folk Symphony” had premiered at Carnegie Hall to rave reviews in 1934.

Dear WISER Community, Yesterday marked Black Women's Equal Pay Day — a reminder that Black women earn 65 cents for every dollar paid to white men. That same undervaluation shows up institutionally, too, in the funding decisions that shape whose art gets sustained and whose gets forgotten. Gwen McK...

05/22/2026

https://mailchi.mp/wiserpolicy/home-on-the-range-wealth-and-the-homestead-act

A family member recently tore his patella and will be out of work for at least four months. He was upbeat about being out of work until his job fired him (business decision, not performance), and he learned he had long-term, not short-term, disability. Higher gas prices, inflation, and unemployment....

04/09/2026

The Strait Is Open, but My Wallet Is Empty -

Yesterday, President Trump announced a two‑week ceasefire with Iran, along with a conditional reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. If you are like me, you have been wondering why the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has caused an increase in oil prices. It turns out that about 20 percent of the world...