Communities across the nation are seeing longer and more frequent heat waves as well as higher average temperatures. But the risks of heat to people’s health and well-being don’t fall equally on all workers. It is essential, and increasingly urgent, that our policy approaches to heat recognize the elevated and distinct risks that women workers face.
National Partnership staff share their reflections on Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century by Alice Wong following book club discussions led by the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Anti-Racism team.
Recently, lawmakers in several states and localities have been advocating for mask bans and have seen success in places like North Carolina and Nassau County, New York. But with the COVID-19 pandemic still raging on and conservative efforts to delegitimize the efficacy of masks, the renewed push to ban face masks, catapulted by fear-mongering and a legacy of eugenics, will harm and threaten the health and safety of disabled people, particularly disabled women and disabled women of color.
The 2023-2024 U.S. Supreme Court term has been one of the most destructive in recent years: the Court put ideology before evidence and expertise, grabbed power from our elected officials in favor of extremist judges serving on lower courts, and showed that they care more about their personal preferences than Americans’ health, safety and more.
Disability justice frameworks work to eradicate persistent inequities for disabled people, particularly for those who are multiply-marginalized. Working towards tenets of disability justice moves us closer to liberation for all people.
Today, we observe the first ever Disability Reproductive Equity Day. Disability Economic Justice Counsel Marissa Ditkowsky, who identifies as a multiply-disabled woman, talks about her personal experiences and why this day is so important to her.
To acknowledge Mental Health Awareness Month this May, DOL’s Office of Disability Employment Policy sat down with Marissa Ditkowsky, disability economic justice counsel at the nonprofit National Partnership for Women & Families and adjunct professor at American University Washington College of Law (AUWCL).
In September 2023, the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services proposed a rule updating disability discrimination regulations under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 for the first time in almost 40 years.
Today, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released its annual data about disabled people in the U.S. workforce. The data reveal a continued upward trend in disabled employment. However, inequities remain for disabled people, particularly disabled women and disabled people of color.
A new proposal from Census would change the definition of disability in the American Community Survey, reducing the official count of disabled people by 40 percent. This change could have significant implications for supports for disabled people.
To the extent a disabled woman can work and chooses to work, barriers to employment and work are some of the many deliberate policy choices that prevent disabled women from achieving economic security.
The recent upheaval of affirmative action in higher education will harm patients of color. This harm could be particularly pronounced for patients of color with rare diseases, who are systematically undiagnosed, misdiagnosed, and left to fend for themselves in an overwhelmingly white medical system.
In 37 states, employers can legally pay workers with disabilities less than the minimum wage – a subminimum wage. If passed, the Raise the Wage Act of 2023 would eliminate the subminimum wage for disabled workers by 2028.
Discussions about abortion access and the impact of Dobbs on disabled people are often overlooked. Let’s examine the ways that reproductive freedom and access to abortion care are critical to the economic security, health, well-being, dignity, and autonomy of disabled people and their families, particularly disabled women of color.
