Disabled people can be paid less and forced into poverty. Eighty-three years ago, then-president Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Fair Labor Standards Act. By many accounts, the FLSA was groundbreaking. It established the minimum wage, overtime rules, child labor standards, and formal workplace …
Flexibility makes a big difference in inclusion. In January 2020, my wife and I were contemplating ways to make space in our one-bedroom apartment for a fourth bookshelf to house our growing collection of fiction. She suggested we get rid of one of our two work desks. I shot the idea down. “Imagine …
Disabled professionals are far rarer than we should be. Access barriers, institutional discrimination, and social misconceptions can all push disabled workers out of employment opportunities they’d likely otherwise be offered. For those who are hired, these same hurdles continue to exist in a way …
By almost every standard, “normal” workplaces were inaccessible. Upon graduating from my master’s program, I made a promise to myself: I would apply to as many jobs as possible and take any interviews that came my way. I sent out hundreds of applications, but nothing materialized. I felt like I was …
The interview process can be a disability minefield. “So… how does the winter weather affect you?” I sat across from the person interviewing me for a job I really wanted, totally unsure of how to respond. It was the spring of 2016, and I had applied for more than 100 jobs in my chosen field of …
The desk-and-chair combination doesn’t always work. Millions of people who were used to going into offices to work have spent the past year trying to do the same job at home. It’s certainly been an ongoing task, especially when it comes to finding a professional background in a quiet corner, but …
In our series Salary Stories, women with long-term career experience open up about the most intimate details of their jobs: compensation. It’s an honest look at how real people navigate the complicated world of negotiating, raises, promotions, and job loss, with the hope it will give young women …
