Under the Bus: How Working Women Are Being Run Over

A legal advocate for women in Washington, DC, Fredrickson (president, American Constitution Soc.) shifts the current focus on professional women to those working in the lowest tier of the labor force, who are disproportionately women of color: caregivers, domestic workers, sales clerks, and farm laborers. Despite a considerable number of labor laws and antidiscrimination statutes passed since the 1930s, which Fredrickson describes briefly, these workers still do dangerous work for small wages, without benefits or protection from illegal practices and sexual harassment, thanks to loopholes and lax enforcement. Employers can reclassify workers as part-time or contract labor, eliminating the need to pay benefits. To accommodate family needs, federal law requires only unpaid leave (and for only 12 weeks) for health, family care, or pregnancy; women often can't afford to take this leave. Childcare is unregulated, unreliable, expensive, or unavailable. Fredrickson offers the standard solutions: closing loopholes, more unionization, increased expansive laws, larger investments in early childhood education, and a more effective social movement. She also proposes "shaming" the United States by emphasizing how meager are the benefits offered to families compared to other nations (alas, an unsuccessful tactic so far).