#u.s. workforce

[sbrown82]

[centerforhci]

39 million working women in the U.S. face menopause as a hidden challenge in the workforce

I kept having fevers. I couldn’t sleep. I was feeling totally unfocused. I thought it was just an extension of my restless shark-like tenancies, but after days of unrelenting symptoms, I decided I should see a doctor. Here’s how our conversation went:

“It’s menopause.”

“What? That’s not possible. I’m too young.”

“Yes, it is. There are many reasons why it can happen at an earlier age than normal.”

“How in the world do women work like this? I’m in a fog and can’t focus.”

“Your symptoms are light.”

“You’re joking, right? It’s going to get worse? Women work every day feeling like this?”

I left the doctor’s office astounded, confused and angry. If many in our workforce are dealing with these symptoms on a daily basis, why aren’t there lobbyists hired? Associations created? Women revolting in the street? Leaders talking about this regularly?

I Was Warned Not to Write This

As I decided to write about this, I was warned by two professional, well-educated colleagues not to do so. They said:

“If you write about this, people will know how old you are and never hire you again.”

And

“If you write about this, you’ll just reinforce the stereotype that women are weepy and unreliable. Just leave it alone.”

Leave it alone? I have daily hot flashes, which means instead of using my EQ to listen to the person in front of me, all I can think about is finding the closest air conditioner. If these symptoms are considered light, how are millions of other women dealing with their (not so light) symptoms at work? And what about the leaders who have to manage people with these symptoms?

Let’s look at the facts about menopause in the workplace.

The Facts About Menopause in the Workplace

Most women officially reach menopause between the ages of 44 and 56, and symptoms can last between two and ten years. It’s possible for symptoms to start as early as 35 years of age, before officially reaching menopause.

An estimated��1.3 million U.S. women reach menopause every year.

Approximately 39 million women in the US workforce are experiencing or will soon experience symptoms of perimenopause or menopause.

Menopause costs approximately $1.8 billion in lost work productivity annually

According to the Labor Bureau of Statistics (LBS), menopause-age women account for almost 30% of the U.S. labor force.

Menopausal Symptoms at Work

So what goes on when a woman is having menopausal symptoms? I mentioned the hot flashes (which I thought were fevers) and insomnia I was experiencing. Women also experience headaches, loss of energy, anxiety attacks, brain fog, aches and pains, and dry skin and eyes. This translates to 45% of the women workforce potentially being at work without enough sleep, sweating to death at their desks with intermittent headaches, no energy and an achy body. I think that fact is worthy of addressing.

Why is No One Talking About Menopause, Affecting a Significant Portion of the Workforce?

Yet menopause remains a taboo topic in many workplaces. Despite approximately 1.3 million women in the U.S. entering menopause each year and 20% of the workforce being in some phase of the menopause transition, conversations around it are still rare. Many women don’t want to admit they are going through menopause, and men often avoid discussing “women’s health issues.” It’s discussed so infrequently that most are unaware of the workplace impacts until they are directly affected or know someone who is. Why is this critical topic, affecting millions, still not widely discussed? Topics like breast cancer, pregnancy, and obesity are openly talked about, yet menopause remains shrouded in silence.

In fact, that’s exactly how women feel about discussing menopause in the workplace: silenced. Hush hush. Don’t say it out loud. Don’t make a big deal. Yet, how can we not talk about this when BOHRF reports that almost 20% of women surveyed believe menopause has had a negative impact on their managers and colleagues’ perceptions of their competence?

Research by the University of Nottingham found many women didn’t want to disclose this issue to their manager, particularly if the manager was younger than them, male or both. Of the women who had taken time off of work due to menopausal symptoms, only half of them disclosed the real reason for their absence. Some women even considered working part time to deal with symptoms but feared this would negatively impact their career. The research also showed that over half of the women studied reported that they were not able to negotiate flexible work hours or practices when dealing with symptoms. All of these realities contribute to the lack of confidence some women feel as even just the lack of sleep affects them cognitively and physically. One women says:

“It certainly affects my confidence from the point of view of speaking at meetings because I am not as fluent…that concerns me. I don’t want to, you know, suddenly not have the word that I need so I am perhaps sort of withdrawing a little bit”

So we have part of a workforce that is less productive and effective, yet we all tiptoe around the topic. Why aren’t there more resources going toward this issue from a productivity standpoint alone?

Two words: Sexism and Ageism

We have to remember that most organizational systems were built by and for men. They were rarely built with women in mind, let alone women with menopausal symptoms. So there is an inherent sexism and bias built into organizations that disadvantage part of the workforce throughout all phases of their careers.

If the tech world feels that 30 is old, no wonder no one wants to mention menopausal symptoms. In this case, using a hot flash as a reason for forgetting something is tantamount to workplace suicide.

It’s a No-Win Situation

And if you were brave enough to mention the hot flash, you might face the gender stereotypes of women weeping in the halls and being unreliable. So it’s a no-win situation.

And even if you have a leader who is educated about menopause, she or he may end up fighting misinformation and lack of support to find a solution. So what’s a leader supposed to do?

Here are some ideas for creating a menopause friendly workplace, which will benefit both those experiencing menopause (i.e. 20% of the workforce) and the organizations that employ them.

7 Tips For Leaders to Create a Menopause-Friendly Workplace

EDUCATE MANAGEMENT This is a no-brainer that often goes overlooked. While managers are trained in subjects like conflict management and finances, they’re not usually trained in dealing with menopause. They should know the symptoms and challenges women face during menopause so they can approach the situation knowledgeably and with compassion. For example, managers who have been educated about menopause might let an employee take control of the thermostat instead of thinking their employee is nit-picky when mentioning the temperature all the time. They may proactively ventilate the office and make sure cold water is available. Also, they’d then be able to recognize behavior related to menopause symptoms that might otherwise hint at lack of engagement.

APPOINT AN IN-OFFICE ADVOCATE (OR A FEW) Appoint a person (or a few) to act as advocates for women in the workplace going through menopause. This person would know about all of the special absence allowances, related wellness programs, and flex policies. They would also speak to leadership or management on behalf of women if needed/requested. This advocate could come from any department at any level, only dependent on their specific personality fit and interest in the role.

IMPLEMENT MENOPAUSAL SUPPORT AND INFORMATION INTO A WELLNESS HOTLINE Some organizations have wellness support programs for their employees, which include a contact number for a resource of coaches, dieticians, and other advisors. Employees can call this number for support in health-related manners such as losing weight, quitting smoking, or getting more physically fit. By adding menopausal support to your wellness support program, women can then get support and information by phone when experiencing menopausal symptoms to better learn how to manage symptoms from a health perspective, and cope with work while not feeling 100%. Information on all flexible work and sick day policies would also be available with this service.

EXPAND BENEFIT PROGRAMS TO INCLUDE ALTERNATIVE THERAPIES Many women are looking to alternative therapies for managing menopausal symptoms such as acupuncture, Chinese medicine, bio-identical hormone replacement, and various other practices used by integrative health practitioners. Though women often see significant improvements, paying out of pocket for integrative health treatments can be cost prohibitive. Including these options as part of a benefits package would enable women to seek treatments that they are comfortable with and that help them feel better.

INCLUDE MENOPAUSE ACTIVITIES OR SPEAKERS IN WELLNESS WEEKS When an organization hosts a “wellness week”, it brings in yoga instructors, massage therapists, nutritionists, chefs specializing in healthy meals, and more. Why not add a component to the wellness week that deals with menopause? Some possibilities are a yoga instructor who can offer poses and breathing exercises particularly for women in this group, a dietician to recommend the best diet to help with symptoms, or a funny speaker to “break the ice” on the topic while educating the team.

ADD FLEXIBILITY TO SICK DAY POLICIE Add sick day policies that cater to menopause-related sickness or absence. Women should experience no disadvantage if they need time off during this time.

ALLOW FLEXIBLE SCHEDULES WHEN NEEDED - If a woman is experiencing menopausal symptoms and is finding it difficult to sleep, it can be challenging for her to get to work on time. Therefore, it is essential to provide some flexibility in the work schedule to accommodate women who are struggling with such symptoms. In addition, if a woman feels unwell at work and needs to go home for a while and return later, a flexible work schedule can enable her to complete her tasks when she's feeling better. Allowing women to work from home when necessary can also be helpful, as it enables them to manage their symptoms from the comfort of their homes.

I have just finished writing an article about menopause. However, I'm now worried about facing discrimination as a result of discussing this topic. I hope that won't be the case. What I do hope is that employers will recognize the challenges women face in the workplace when experiencing menopausal symptoms and take steps to address them. Leaders have a real opportunity to make a positive impact on women's health in the U.S. By following these tips, employers can turn this no-win situation into a win-win.

What has been your experience with menopause in the workplace? If you have experienced it, did you feel like you were being perceived as an underperforming employee? If you have managed someone who experienced menopause, what tips can you give us? I would love to hear your thoughts.

Leave a comment below, send us an email, or follow us on LinkedIn.

[ivygorgon]

AN OPEN LETTER to THE U.S. SENATE

Women deserve equal pay! Pass S. 728, the Paycheck Fairness Act now!

393 so far! Help us get to 500 signers!

Women—especially women of color—are the backbone of our nation’s economy. But they are consistently underpaid and their work is undervalued. Action on equal pay is sorely needed to address these inequities, but Republican Senators have blocked vital legislation, S. 728, the Paycheck Fairness Act, that would achieve critical progress. The median annual earnings for women working full time, year-round in 2022 was $52,360, or just 84 cents for each dollar earned by men, with much wider gaps for most women of color compared with white, non-Hispanic men. All women—regardless of the number of hours worked during the year—typically made $41,320, or 78 cents for each dollar earned by all men. Discrimination is one of the factors contributing to this gap, leading to thousands of dollars in lost wages for women over the course of their careers. That’s why we need the Paycheck Fairness Act. The Paycheck Fairness Act would strengthen existing equal pay protections, prohibit retaliation against workers who discuss their pay or challenge pay discrimination, limit employers’ reliance on salary history, and much more. These robust measures would bring us one step closer to equal pay. Women and families cannot afford to wait for equal pay. We need to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act now.

▶ Created on April 3 by Jess Craven · 393 signers in the past 7 days

📱 Text SIGN PWBBDA to 50409

🤯 Liked it? Text FOLLOW JESSCRAVEN101 to 50409

[justsaying4041]

The Future of U.S. Embassy Operations Under Project 2025: A Critical Perspective

Project 2025 outlines a transformative vision for U.S. embassy operations, aiming to streamline diplomatic missions, increase efficiency, and align embassy roles more directly with U.S. foreign policy goals. While the plan seeks to modernize embassy functions and reduce operational costs, critics argue that the proposed changes could compromise the diplomatic effectiveness, flexibility, and local…

[trendynewsnow]

The Rise of Remote Work in America: Trends and Insights for 2023

The Rise of Remote Work in America In recent years, remote work has transformed from a temporary solution to a long-term norm for many professionals across the United States. As offices begin to reopen, it appears that they may never return to the pre-pandemic occupancy levels. A pressing question remains: how many individuals are currently working from home, and from where are they doing it? A…

[metamatar]

Employers desire foreign workers who are accustomed to the hazardous work sites of industrial construction; in particular, they specifically solicit migrants who do not have a history of labor organizing within SWANA. In response, labor brokerage firms brand themselves as offering migrant workers who are deferential. Often, labor brokers conflate the category of South Asian with docility; [...] as inherently passive, disciplined, and, most important, unfettered by volatile working conditions. "We say quality, they [U.S. employers] say seasoned. We both know what it means. Workers who are not going to quit, not going to run away in the foreign country and do as they are told.” [...]

For migrants, the U.S. oil industry presents a rare chance to apply their existing skill set in a country with options for permanent residency and sponsorship of family members. Migrants wish to find an end to their tem­porary worker status; they imagine the United States as a liberal economy in which labor standards are enforced and there are opportunities for citizenship and building a life for their family. [...] What brokers fail to explain is that South Asian migrants are being recruited as guest workers. Migrants will not have access to U.S. citizenship or visas for family members; in fact, their employment status will be quite similar to their SWANA migration.

While nations such as the Philippines have both state-mandated and independent migrant rights agencies, the Indian government has minimal avenues for worker protection. These are limited to hotlines for reporting abusive foreign employers and Indian consulates located in a few select countries of the SWANA region. [... Brokers] emphasize the docility of Indian migrants in comparison to the disruptive tendencies of other Asian migrant workers. [...] “Some of these Filipino men you see make a lot of trouble in the Arab countries. Even their women, who work as maids and such, lash out. The employer says one wrong thing and the workers get the whole country [the Philippines] on the street. [...] But you don’t see our people creating a tamasha [spectacle] overseas.” [...] Just as Filipinx migrants are racialized to be undisciplined labor, Indian brokers construct divisions within the South Asian workforce to promote the primacy of their own firms. In particular, Pakistani workers are racialized as an abrasive population.

[...] While the public image of the South Asian American community remains as model minorities, presumed to be primarily upwardly mobile professionals, the global reality of the population is quite to the contrary. [...] From the historic colonial routes initiated by British occupation of South Asia to the emergence of energy markets within the countries of SWANA, migrants have been recruited to build industries by contributing their labor to construction projects. Within the last decade, these South Asian migrants, with experience in the SWANA oil industry, have been actively solicited as guest workers into the energy sector of the United States. The growth of hydraulic fracturing has opened new territory for oil extraction; capitalizing on the potential market are numerous stakeholders who have invested in industrial construction projects across the southwestern United States. The solicitation of South Asian construction workers is not coincidental. [...] Kartik, a globally competitive firm’s broker, explains the connection of Indian labor to practices of the past. “You know we come from a long history of working in foreign lands. Even the British used to send us to Africa and the Arab regions to work in the mines and oil fields. It’s part of our history.”

Seasoning Labor: Contemporary South Asian Migrations and the Racialization of Immigrant Workers, Saunjuhi Verma in the Journal of Asian American Studies

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

ANTISEMITISM ON COLLEGE CAMPUSES EXPOSED

Committee on Education & the Workforce. U.S. House of Representatives

KEY FINDINGS

Key Finding: Students who established unlawful antisemitic encampments—which violated university polices and created unsafe and hostile learning environments—were given shocking concessions. Universities’ dereliction of leadership and failure to enforce their rules put students and personnel at risk. o Finding: Northwestern put radical anti-Israel faculty in charge of negotiations with the encampment. o Finding: Northwestern’s provost shockingly approved of a proposal to boycott Sabra hummus. o Finding: Northwestern entertained demands to hire an “anti-Zionist” rabbi and Northwestern President Michael Schill may have misled Congress in testimony regarding the matter. o Finding: Columbia’s leaders offered greater concessions to encampment organizers than they publicly acknowledged. o Finding: UCLA officials stood by and failed to act as the illegal encampment violated Jewish students’ civil rights and placed campus at risk.

Key Finding: So-called university leaders intentionally declined to express support for campus Jewish communities. Instead of explicitly condemning antisemitic harassment, universities equivocated out of concern of offending antisemitic students and faculty who rallied in support of foreign terrorist organizations. o Finding: Harvard leaders’ failure to condemn Hamas’ attack in their widely criticized October 9 statement was an intentional decision. o Finding: Harvard President Claudine Gay and then-Provost Alan Garber asked Harvard Corporation Senior Fellow Penny Pritzker not to label the slogan “from the river to the sea” antisemitic, with Gay fearing doing so would create expectations Harvard would have to impose discipline. o Finding: The Columbia administration failed to correct false narratives of a “chemical attack” that were used to vilify Jewish students, but imposed disproportionate discipline on the Jewish students involved.

Key Finding: Universities utterly failed to impose meaningful discipline for antisemitic behavior that violated school rules and the law. In some cases, radical faculty successfully thwarted meaningful discipline. o Finding: Universities failed to enforce their rules and hold students accountable for antisemitic conduct violations. o Finding: Columbia’s University Senate obstructed plans to discipline students involved in the takeover of Hamilton Hall. o Finding: Harvard’s faculty intervened to prevent meaningful discipline toward antisemitic conduct violations on numerous occasions. o Finding: Harvard Corporation Senior Fellow Penny Pritzker acknowledged that the university’s disciplinary boards’ enforcement of the rules is “uneven” and called this “unacceptable.”

Key Finding: So-called university leaders expressed hostility to congressional oversight and criticism of their record. The antisemitism engulfing campuses was treated as a public-relations issue and not a serious problem demanding action. o Finding: Harvard president Claudine Gay disparaged Rep. Elise Stefanik’s character to the university’s Board of Overseers. o Finding: Columbia’s leaders expressed contempt for congressional oversight of campus antisemitism. o Finding: Penn’s leaders suggested politicians calling for President Magill’s resignation were “easily purchased” and sought to orchestrate negative media coverage of Members of Congress who scrutinized the University

[honeysickledream]

i love the idea of soap having a big family but…he’s not all that close with them nowadays. in fact, it’s been ages since he’s seen the gaggle of cousins he used to play pretend with in the back garden or even in the woods. family reunions aren’t commonplace anymore because everyone is so damn busy or spread too far apart. his favorite cousin is living in the U.S doing something, Soap’s never tuned in to the technical speak, and the rest are all busy getting their degrees, focused on being part of the workforce, and/or making their own families.

Soap’s closest to his Ma and Pa. they video call at least twice a week when Soap’s not deployed, and he spams his parents with stupid memes and goofy videos at odd hours of the night. He’s close with his older sister, too, talking to her about once a week for a short amount of time. She updates him on his nieces and nephews, the cat he rescued but can’t keep on base, and any shocking gossip from their hometown. He’ll send her pictures of the animals he sees, occasionally will send her a funny post, and maybe once a quarter they meet up to have dinner and see a show.

He can’t remember the last time he hung out with his older brother, though. Maybe a year or two ago? Soap will text the fucker only to get a reply a few weeks or a month later, then it’s radio silence. His brother is like that with everyone, so Soap doesn’t take it personally (most of the time).

At first, Soap hated the change, hated the distancing his family went through. He thought he was losing everything and everyone, but he came to realize it’s not like that for the most part. The people he has in his life are there solidly and that’s what’s important. And when he brings you home for the first time, you’re not overwhelmed by his 16 first cousins, 12 second cousins, 3 aunts and 6 uncles, his Ma and Pa and sister and brother and all their kids. It’s a mellow evening, the closest adults in the family able to relax and get to know you while you do the same.

He wants that tight knit family with you one day. He wants your kids to know all the cousins, yes, but he also wants them to have the security of solid relationships with those closest to them. He wants them to know that even as family members pull away or seemingly vanish off the face if the earth, that there are still people who exist and love them, who share a million memories with them and will happily make a million more. He doesn’t want them to struggle with the feeling of losing security and love like he did.

[beastieclub]

in every video that's been coming out lately about stalls and changes in the U.S. economy, there's this incredibly charged silence in all of them.

for example, i was watching a video on what happened to cause the decline of 'mid-budget films'. all sorts of factors were discussed, from the streaming wars, to corporate consolidation, to low attendance in theaters. all true, yet... low attendance in theaters is attributed to streaming, market pressures, and big names not pulling people in- also true.

but not once was the fact that 1,140,278 people in the U.S. alone have died since 2023 mentioned.

there are 1,140,278 less people to fill those theater seats than there were in 2019. That is 1,140,278 less people making, shipping, and selling our goods. that is 1,140,278 less people taking their earnings home and spending what little they have left on those goods, the only thing keeping our manchild-ran economy from crumbling into recession.

our workforce decreased by 1,140,278 less people because you KNOW it was the working class, out there dying for everyone else. our workforce decreased by 1,140,278 less people due to one cause alone.

but no one says it. no one factors it in. countless thinkpieces, videos, news segments, conversations overheard in packed restaurants full of maskless, spitting faces about how our economy is crumbling under its own weight because of the internet, because of countless natural disasters battering our country from all sides, because of global trade, because of anything but the factor that we lost 1,140,278 people to preventable causes.

this 1,140,278 people, gone from our lives, and this doesn't even begin to touch the number of people permanently disabled, unable to work. but that number is far bigger than we can reliably calculate. more than we could begin to process.

this, by the way, is the number for the U.S. only. the country i live in, who ranks second worldwide in deaths per million due to this one cause.

and after three years of this constant, ongoing mass dying, we don't say its name. there's an eerie silence around it, a gaping hole we dare not touch. lest we violate some sort of social rule, heaven forbid. we spit on the deaths of those 1,140,278 people every time we forget, and every time we let our government get away with not protecting or caring about its people.

tell me, when was the last time you acknowledged COVID?

[mariacallous]

Georgians are in the streets fighting for their democracy. The Georgian Dream party, which is working to align Tbilisi with Moscow’s interests, declared victory in the country’s Oct. 26 election before the votes were even counted. Voters and election observers were harassed by Russian-funded gangs and mobsters; just after the election, protesters holding European Union flags were sprayed with water from high-powered hoses. And the person who has the iron will necessary to lead the charge against Russian-inspired authoritarianism in Georgia? A woman: President Salome Zourabichvili.

This is no accident. Across the world, women have, and are, playing incredible roles as bulwarks against the rise of authoritarianism. Moldovan President Maia Sandu is standing up to a tsunami of Russian disinformation. In Poland, women played a critical role in the effort to oust the right-wing populist Law and Justice (PiS) party. In Hong Kong, women continue to be the practical and normative face of resistance to Chinese authoritarian rule.

These are the freedom fighters of the 21st century. And yet, the U.S. national security community tends to view women’s issues as a domestic concern, frivolous, or irrelevant to “hard” security matters. For example, in 2003, discussions of securing Iraq excluded women, with a top U.S. general stating, “When we get the place secure, then we’ll be able to talk about women’s issues.” More recently, the role of women in the military has been reduced to discussions of diversity, equity, and inclusion, rather than a focus on how women have been vital to solving the United States’ most wicked national security problems—from serving on the front lines in combat to providing essential intelligence analysis. But if the overall aim of U.S. national strategy is to shore up democracy and democratic freedoms, the treatment of women and girls cannot be ignored.

Globally, women’s rights are often eroding in both policy and practice, from the struggles of the Iranian and Afghan women who exist under gender apartheid to the Kenyan women experiencing the harsh backlash of the rise of the manosphere. In tandem, there’s been a sharp rise in reports of online harassment and misogyny worldwide.

National security analysts explore issues and psychologies through any number of prisms, but Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) remains an underutilized one. One of the national security community’s core tasks is discerning signals from noise in the global strategic environment, and regressive ideas on gender and gender equality can be a useful proxy metric for democratic backsliding and authoritarian rise.

The United States’ 2023 Strategy and National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security provides the backbone for the United States to leverage WPS to counter authoritarianism. It highlights that displays of misogyny online are linked to violent action. The plan also points out that formally incorporating gendered perspectives is essential for maintaining democratic institutions at home and modeling them aboard. This includes recognizing misogyny—online or in policy—as an early indicator of authoritarian rise.

Unfortunately, WPS is often misread as simply including more women in the national security workforce. But it is more than that. It offers a framework for understanding why it is useful to take gendered perspectives into account when assessing how the actions of individuals or groups enhance national security, which is especially important at a time when authoritarian regimes are weaponizing gender in ways that strengthen their grip on power domestically and justify their aggression abroad.

In Russia, President Vladimir Putin has argued that he is the guardian of traditional Christian values, telling women that they should be back at home raising children, and has been rolling back domestic violence laws at the same time. Days before invading Ukraine in February 2022, Putin said, “Like it or don’t like it, it’s your duty, my beauty,” which was widely interpreted within Russia as a reference to martial rape. Russia’s own army is built on a foundation of hierarchical hazing in which “inferior” men are degraded by their comrades. With that kind of rhetoric from the top, is it any wonder that Russian soldiers’ war crimes have included the rapes of women and children?

But Putin isn’t alone. In Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orban has consolidated media outlets to censor women’s voices, in the name of protecting traditional values. He has also used coercive financial practices to push women out of the workforce and positions of political power and into more traditional roles of wife and mother. In Belarus, President Alexander Lukashenko attempted to force the deportation of the most prominent woman opposition leader and imprisoned her after she tore up her passport to prevent it. In China, where women were once told they “hold up half the sky,” President Xi Jinping has worked to undo decades of Chinese Communist Party policy on gender equality. Chinese women are now being encouraged to return home and become mothers, while feminists have been targeted legally and socially.

The WPS agenda provides the U.S. national security community with three opportunities to recognize, understand, and counter early-stage authoritarianism.

First, the United States can do a much better job of supporting women’s groups around the world as a central aspect of its national security strategy. Women’s groups are often a bellwether for authoritarian rise and democratic backsliding—as currently on display in Russia, China, Hungary, Georgia, and Belarus, where women inside and outside their respective regimes have been specifically targeted or attacked.

Women have also found innovative ways to resist the rise of authoritarian norms. In places like Moldova, women have acted as bulwarks against authoritarianism despite vicious disinformation campaigns targeting women leaders. Yet when it comes to formulating and executing strategies on national security, women’s groups are often left in the margins and their concerns dismissed.

Second, gender perspectives are essential to more fulsome intelligence gathering and analysis. The U.S. intelligence community can do a much better job of integrating gender—particularly as it relates to the treatment of the most vulnerable—as an indicator of societal and democratic health. This includes understanding how both masculinities and femininities influence decision-making and how, in turn, lived experiences act as necessary analytical tools. Training collectors and analysts of intelligence to recognize gendered indicators will provide a more robust view of the geopolitical landscape and fill critical holes in national security decision-making.

Finally, the United States must improve the participation of its national security community in WPS and feminist foreign-policy discussions. For too long, the “hard” security sector has distanced itself from more “human” security-focused endeavors and treated women’s rights as something that’s just nice to have.

Yet national security is an essentially human endeavor, and gender is a central component of what it means to be human. This is something that needs to be appreciated to better understand the many dimensions of the conflict—disinformation, online influence campaigns, and lawfare—that authoritarian regimes are waging against the United States and its allies.

[feminist-space]

Wear a mask (respirators like N95s or KN95s or KF94s), especially in healthcare settings, in public transportation, in crowded places. Long covid has severe consequences that, coupled with the dystopian nightmare that is everything else, can be devastating. It's worth it to at least try to take steps to stay safe by wearing a mask. For ourselves and for the people around us.

If you need help getting masks, there are mask blocs throughout the country that you can reach out to. And Project N95 also has resources for those who cannot afford N95 etc respirators.

Excerpts from article:

"About one in four Covid patients experience long-term symptoms weeks or months after getting infected, according to multiple studies published last year."

"A May study from the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis found that both unvaccinated and vaccinated people are at risk of long Covid. The risk is higher for the unvaccinated, but the study suggested that vaccines only reduce the risk of long Covid by 15%."

"The report estimates that 2 million to 4 million of those people are currently out of work due to long Covid."

"If 4 million long Covid patients are out of work, the lost earnings could be as high as $230 billion, the report says.

That’s nearly 1% of the country’s current-dollar gross domestic product (GDP) of $24.88 trillion."

"The condition can undeniably impact a patient’s life, work and health. Last year, the Americans with Disabilities Act labeled long Covid a disability because of how it can limit the major life activities of patients.

A July 2021 study from the Patient-Led Research Collaborative measured the condition’s effect on patients’ work over the course of seven months. Only about 27% of long Covid patients worked as many hours as they did before failing ill. Roughly 23% weren’t working at all, as a direct result of long Covid. That included being on sick leave, disability leave, quitting, being fired or being unable to find a job that would accommodate them."

[covid-safer-hotties]

With COVID-19 relief gone, teachers are losing their jobs. It's a blow to diversity. - Published Sept 3, 2024

Erica Popoca's ninth grade English students were livid in the spring when she told them she wouldn't be back to teach this fall.

The district where she works in Hartford, Connecticut, terminated her contract because the COVID-19 relief money that covered her salary was about to dry up. Newer teachers such as Popoca were the first to be cut. Her students wrote letters urging school board members to change their minds.

Popoca, the founding adviser of the multilingual student club, worried she would lose bonds with Latino students she had taught for two years who identify with her culturally as a Latina and as one of the few teachers who speaks Spanish at the school.

The district ultimately came up with other funding to pay her, and in a win for her and her students, officials reversed the layoff.

Popoca is among the thousands of teachers and school staffers across the U.S. at risk of losing their jobs as districts balance their budgets and prepare for the shortfall after COVID-19 relief money expires. Districts have been scrambling to put unfunded staffers into different roles. The reality is that many students will lose contact with adults with whom they have built relationships in recent years.

The Biden administration granted schools $189.5 billion over the past few years through the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER) under the American Rescue Plan Act. School officials have until the end of September to commit the remainder of their money, and districts will no longer be able to pay for nonteaching staff roles with that money after Sept. 30. Schools nationwide used most of their relief fund money to pay for classroom teachers and support staff, according to a U.S. Department of Education analysis of district spending for fiscal year 2022. Districts across the country are now laying off recently hired educators, teaching assistants, counselors, restorative justice coordinators and other key staff at schools, or they're scrambling to find ways to retain them.

A recent survey of 190 district leaders by the nonprofit research group Rand found that teacher reductions were "the most common budget cut" officials anticipated. Conversations about staff layoffs cropped up in at least 28 districts ahead of the upcoming fiscal cliff, according to a tracker of media reports from the Georgetown University-based research center Edunomics Lab, which monitors potential layoffs at districts.

The post-pandemic layoffs have been widespread. Montana's Helena Public Schools cut 36 positions, including 21 teachers. The Arlington Independent School District in Texas cut 275 positions, including counselors, tutors and teaching support staff.

Newer teachers are the first to go in states that allow or require districts to use "last-in-first-out" policies, which protect tenured teachers – and many people terminated will be staffers of color, said Aaron Pallas, a professor of sociology and education at Columbia University. States that diversified their educator workforce in the past several years will see a backslide in that progress since "recently hired staff who are often more diverse" will be "laid off more than experienced staff who often are more traditionally white," he said.

Schools serving low-income students will be hit hardest by the shift in funding because those campuses received more federal relief money, Pallas said.

Schools were required to comply with some equity provisions when obligating the relief money. The end of the funding will disparately affect students of color and kids in high-poverty neighborhoods.

Popoca, who comes from the Bronx in New York City, is concerned about what the losses will mean for her school.

"I am relieved but wary because quite a few positions are still vacant," she said. "We don’t have the amount of staff we're supposed to have, and I'm concerned about how the lack of staff is going to impact the students and the school."

Which states are likely to lose new teachers? At least 11 states – Alaska, California, Hawaii, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, Ohio and Rhode Island – last year had policies explicitly requiring districts to consider seniority in layoff decisions, according to a 2023 analysis from Educators for Excellence, a New York-based nonprofit organization that supports state laws that rid of seniority-based considerations from layoff decisions. Some other states, including Connecticut, where Popoca lives, allow districts to consider seniority in layoff decisions among other factors, but it's not required. Some states ban districts from considering seniority as a factor.

Because junior teachers tend to begin their careers in higher-poverty schools, there could be cases in which schools lose high percentages of their staff, said Marguerite Roza, director of Georgetown University's Edunomics Lab.

"It's really disruptive for students," Roza said. "And it's not great for teachers."

When Popoca told her class of mostly Black and Latino eighth graders last spring that she would be laid off, they were heartbroken. She's one of a few new staffers of color returning to the district this year. A few of her colleagues lost their jobs in the spring and won't be back when school starts, she said.

What should families expect to see at schools? In addition to the emergency funding layoffs, Roza said, many teachers may leave of their own accord. Some districts may also try to shrink their staffing pools with attrition rather than layoffs.

"They're going to hope and pray teachers just leave," Roza said.

Most of the cuts will likely hit the pool of support staff districts beefed up during the pandemic to help kids recover, Columbia's Pallas said.

The counselors, nurses, restorative justice coordinators and teaching assistants added to campus staff in recent years will be gone, and students and their school communities will start to feel that loss by the start of this school year, he said.

Francis Pina is one of several staffers and one of few Black men hired by Boston Public Schools to train teachers how to infuse social-emotional learning into classroom teaching. At the end of last year, he learned his role and the jobs of most new staffers on his team would be dissolved because it was considered a short-term position. Boston Public Schools paid Pina with COVID-19 emergency money through the end of the past academic year.

Pina will return as a high school math teacher this year, but he worries about what will happen to the district's social-emotional learning program.

When he heard his role was coming to an end, Pina said, he was nervous because he felt it was "really important to support students" still facing pandemic-related academic, social and emotional setbacks. He says students in the district haven't worked through all of those losses, even if the district has gone back to the "status quo."

As a Black man who attended Boston Public Schools, he believes he offers a unique perspective to kids, including Black students, and helps them thrive academically and emotionally in school.

"Prioritizing this is important," Pina said. "Kids need to know we care about them."

Teacher diversification will face a setback Diversity among the teaching staff has improved in recent years in Massachusetts, where Pina teaches. But the state's last-in-first-out policy means schools will lose diversification in the workforce, Roza, from the research lab at Georgetown, said.

That's a problem considering students of color are the majority at public schools in the U.S. Nearly one-fourth of public schools did not have an educator of color on staff, according to a May analysis of state-by-state data from TNTP, a nonprofit organization focused on the needs of students of color and those in poverty. Academic studies show students of color perform better academically when they have teachers from diverse backgrounds

There's a surprising reason: Why many schools don't have a single Black teacher

Representation on campuses may be further diminished when the emergency funding ends.

To stave off those losses and rescind seniority-based layoffs, some lawmakers tried to change how layoffs work, but they ran into pushback from the state teachers union, which said the policies harmed protections for senior educators. In March, the Massachusetts Legislature rejected sections of education bills that would have removed seniority considerations as the sole factor for layoffs.

“While we are happy to see the legislature taking strides to improve teacher diversity in Massachusetts, it is disheartening to see that the Education Committee chose not to prioritize protecting these very educators in the event of district layoffs,” Lisa Lazare, executive director of Educators for Excellence's Massachusetts chapter, said in a news release.

More new staffers of color are expected to face layoffs this year, Roza said.

For now, Popoca, in Connecticut, is looking forward to returning to the classroom and seeing her students – many of whom come from Latin American countries and with whom she feels a special bond. She's worried about the cuts, she says, because the school needs more teachers and support staff, not less.

She already has heard from people she knows who had considered entering the teaching profession in Hartford or elsewhere who have pulled back because of the district's lack of money.

"It's really concerning," she said.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Qasim Rashid at Let's Address This:

Did you know that seven of the 39 signers of the Declaration of Independence were immigrants? Unfortunately today, political rhetoric has successfully demonized immigrants with misinformation and disinformation. Politicians (Trump) often repeat the same tired accusations about immigrants, claiming they bring crime, drugs, diseases, and economic burdens. However, each of these accusations is not just misleading, it's outright false. And it is is important we tackle these common lies and debunk them with facts—because that’s how we build a stronger, safer, and healthier America. Below I debunk 7 of the most common anti-immigrant myths.

Myth 1: "Immigrants bring crime to this country."

Fact: Immigrants actually make communities safer. According to research, including a study from Northwestern University that looked at 150 years of crime data, immigrants—both documented and undocumented—have always had lower crime rates than U.S. citizens. The myth that immigrants increase crime has been disproven time and time again. In reality, immigrants contribute to more stable, law-abiding communities.

[...]

Myth 3: “Immigrants are lazy and collect welfare.”

Most immigrants, including undocumented immigrants, are ineligible for federal public benefits such as welfare, food stamps (SNAP), Medicaid, and Supplemental Security Income (SSI). According to U.S. law, lawful permanent residents (green card holders) must wait at least five years before they can access these benefits. Undocumented immigrants and certain temporary visa holders are entirely ineligible for most federal welfare programs.

Myth 4: "Immigrants are taking our jobs."

Fact: America is suffering a massive labor shortage. Far from “stealing jobs,” immigrants are filling that critical labor shortages. Study after study shows that immigrants help boost the economy, and their presence in the workforce increases wages for all workers, both U.S. citizens and immigrants alike. 

[...]

Myth 5: "Immigrants bring diseases into the U.S."

Fact: Immigrants have higher vaccination rates than U.S. citizens. So not only are they less likely to carry diseases, they are also more likely to help prevent the spread of illnesses. This myth is particularly dangerous because it perpetuates xenophobic stereotypes, when in reality, immigrants often contribute to healthier communities.

Qasim Rashid wrote a solid article debunking seven of the most common MAGA myths about immigration, such as the lie that immigrants bring crime and the xenophobic myth that immigrants bring diseases in this country.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

November 20, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Nov 20, 2024

Remember how American voters so hated Project 2025, the playbook for a second Trump term written by the Heritage Foundation and other right-wing institutions, that Trump said he had nothing to do with it, and then one of its key architects, Russell Vought, told undercover filmmakers that Trump was only running away from the project as political cover? 

It appears Vought was right and the story that Trump had nothing to do with Project 2025 was, indeed, just political cover. Ed O’Keefe and Major Garrett of CBS News reported today that two sources close to the Trump transition team have told them that they expect Trump to name Vought to lead the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). 

Vought wrote the section of Project 2025 that covers the presidency, calling for “aggressive use of the vast powers of the executive branch” to “bend or break the bureaucracy to the presidential will” and identifying the OMB as the means of enforcing the president’s agenda. Vought was Trump’s OMB director during the end of his first term and tried to remove the civil service protections that have been in place since 1883 to protect federal workers from being fired for political reasons. That plan, known as Schedule F, would have affected about 88% of the federal workforce. 

One of the first things Biden did when he took office was to rescind Trump’s executive order making that shift.

Like that earlier attempt, Project 2025 leans heavily on the idea that “personnel is policy,” and that idea illuminates the choices the Trump team is making. Trump has refused to sign the official documents required by the 2022 Presidential Transition Act. Those documents mandate ethics commitments and require the incoming president to disclose private donations. They also limit those donations. Without the paperwork, Trump appointees cannot start the process of getting security clearances through the Federal Bureau of Investigation; the team says it is planning to do its own vetting of its candidates instead.  

Claiming they have a mandate, Trump’s people have said they are launching “a hostile takeover” of the American government “on behalf of the American people.” But as voting numbers continue to come in, Trump’s majority has fallen below 50% of voters, meaning that more voters chose someone else than chose Trump on November 5. These results are far from being in “mandate” territory.

The U.S. Constitution charges Congress with writing the laws under which the American people live, and the president with taking “care that the laws be faithfully executed.” Since 1933, Congress has created an extensive system of agencies that regulate business and provide a basic social safety net. Congress will say, for example, that the U.S. needs an agency to protect the environment (like the Environmental Protection Agency, established under Republican president Richard M. Nixon), appropriate money for it, oversee its leadership, and then trust those leaders to hire the personnel necessary to carry out its mission. 

Regulations and social welfare programs and the agencies that provide them are broadly popular—think how hard it has been for members to get rid of Social Security, for example—so Congress trims at the edges rather than abolishing them. As the U.S. budget has grown, they often bear the brunt of accusations that the government spends too much, although what has really caused the budget to operate deeply in the red is the tax cuts for the wealthy put into place by Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump.  

Right-wing leaders who want to continue cutting regulations and taxes are newly empowered by Trump’s victory in the 2024 election, and they are turning to a quirk of the government to enable them to work around Congress. 

Since the first administration of President George Washington, agencies created by Congress have lived in the Executive Branch. If, as Vought and others argue, the president is the absolute authority in that branch, Trump can do whatever he wants with those agencies and the civil servants—the bureaucrats—who run them.  

In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today, billionaires Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy laid out their plans for cutting the U.S. government. Neither of them has ever held elected office, but they see that as an advantage, not a downside: “We are entrepreneurs, not politicians,” they write. “We will serve as outside volunteers, not federal officials or employees.” Trump has named them to the “Department of Government Efficiency,” or DOGE. Despite the “department” name, DOGE is not an official government agency—which would require ethics disclosures—but rather an advisory panel. 

Their op-ed begins by redefining congressional authority to create agencies to suggest that agencies are illegitimate. “Most government enforcement decisions and discretionary expenditures aren’t made by the democratically elected president or even his political appointees,” they write, “but by millions of unelected, unappointed civil servants within government agencies who view themselves as immune from firing thanks to civil-service protections.” This, they say, “imposes massive direct and indirect costs on taxpayers.” 

“Thankfully,” they continue, “we have a historic opportunity to solve the problem. On Nov. 5, voters decisively elected Donald Trump with a mandate for sweeping change, and they deserve to get it.”

While “politicians” have “abetted” an “entrenched and ever-growing bureaucracy,” they write, they will work with the OMB to identify regulations that, they claim, Trump can issue an executive order to stop enforcing. “This would liberate individuals and businesses from illicit regulations never passed by Congress and stimulate the U.S. economy,” they write. Should Trump want to cut things that Congress wants to fund, they claim that Trump will simply refuse to spend those appropriations, challenging the 1974 Impoundment Control Act that declared such withholding illegal. 

Musk and Ramaswamy reiterated their support for cutting programs that are not currently authorized, although budget experts note that such a lapse is a tool to permit adjustments to programs Congress has, in fact, authorized and have also pointed out that one of the top items on that list is health care for veterans. Cuts to all these programs will naturally mean extensive cuts to the federal workforce. 

“With a decisive electoral mandate and a 6–3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court,” they write, “DOGE has a historic opportunity for structural reductions in the federal government. We are prepared for the onslaught from entrenched interests in Washington. We expect to prevail. Now is the moment for decisive action.” 

They conclude by asserting that “[t]here is no better birthday gift to our nation on its 250th anniversary than to deliver a federal government that would make our Founders proud,” which is one heck of a conclusion to a blueprint for taking the power of American lawmaking from the Congress, where the Framers put it, and delivering it into the hands of an extraordinarily powerful president acting on the advice of two unelected billionaires, one of whom wasn’t born in the United States.  

In the vein of getting rid of regulations, today the chief executive of Delta Air Lines said he expected the Trump administration would be a “breath of fresh air” after the Biden administration’s consumer-protection laws that he called government “overreach.” 

Meanwhile, in Washington, the Senate has been confirming President Joe Biden’s judicial nominees, with the absence of Republican senators making the confirmations easier.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[eretzyisrael]

by Richard Goldberg

Anti-Semitism is spreading in K–12 school districts. Even in primary and secondary education, Jews are often viewed as privileged whites and oppressors, with Israel branded as an egregious example of “settler colonialism” and oppression of “indigenous people.” “Liberated ethnic studies” curricula, like the one mandated by California, have created a distinct variant of critical theory aimed at Jews for being Zionist colonial oppressors.

Teachers’ unions are the leading purveyors of this approach. Two years ago, the United Educators of San Francisco adopted a resolution calling for a boycott of Israel. The Chicago Teachers Union instigated pro-Hamas demonstrations in the Windy City after October 7. The union persuaded Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson (a former CTU lobbyist) to condemn Israel in the city council, and it organized a student and faculty “walkout” to show solidarity with Hamas—a city-authorized event that left Jewish students and teachers feeling intimidated. In suburban Seattle, kids as young as seven were recently encouraged to condemn Israel and join in anti-Semitic chants. Oakland Unified School District faces a federal investigation after 30 Jewish families removed their kids from school due to rampant anti-Semitism. And at a high school in New York City, hundreds of students hunted down a female teacher they saw on social media holding a sign supporting Israel.

Marxist ideology is the primary culprit influencing this mind-set, but not the only one. Qatar, a tiny Persian Gulf country that supports Hamas, is funding anti-Semitic “scholarship” not only in American universities but also in K–12 schools. Qatar Foundation International gave $1 million to the New York City Department of Education between 2019 and 2022 for a program featuring a map of the Middle East that erases the Jewish state. The same story played out at a public charter school in Irving, Texas. What other districts in the country might be taking money directly or indirectly from a chief Hamas sponsor? Brown University’s Choices Program, used by more than 1 million high school students nationwide, exhibits a clear anti-Israel bias. According to Brown, the Qataris “purchased and distributed a selection of existing Choices curriculum units to 75 teachers whose districts didn’t have funding to buy them.”

Tools to fight back, however, are available. Governors and state legislatures can begin by blocking “ethnic studies” from the K–12 curriculum and by imposing new teacher-certification requirements. To curb foreign meddling, states should ban school funding or in-kind donations from entities connected with countries that harbor U.S.-designated terrorist organizations. School districts and state boards of education should use the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of anti-Semitism to root out conduct meeting its standard. Several groups sued the Santa Ana, California, school district in state court for failing to notify parents before approving ethnic studies courses that contain anti-Jewish bias and for harassing Jewish parents at school board meetings.

At the federal level, parents could file formal complaints with the Department of Education for discrimination under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. Such complaints are increasingly common against colleges and universities, but any school that receives federal funding must comply with Title VI. The House Committee on Education and the Workforce should consider holding a hearing on anti-Semitism in K–12 schools, putting the national spotlight on anti-Jewish administrators and school board leaders.

Local, state, and federal officials have played meaningful roles in fighting back against critical race theory in the classroom. They need to fight equally hard to stop anti-Semitism masquerading as Middle East or ethnic studies.