For more than 50 years, we have led pioneering initiatives to challenge gender discrimination in the workplace.
Our legal team has worked to enact critical legislation, educate women about their workplace rights, and hold employers accountable by enforcing these laws in the courts. Yet despite critical advances, women continue to face significant obstacles to achieving equal access to workplace opportunity and economic security, which are all the more prevalent for women of color, immigrants, single mothers, and transgender women. Our current initiatives take a comprehensive, intersectional approach that tackles both overt discrimination and root causes of gender inequality.
Legal Impact Strategies
Litigation
We have been proud to lead and support landmark workplace equality cases to safeguard and advance economic security and workplace equality, under local, state, and federal laws, including Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, and the Equal Pay Act. Our impact litigation work has challenged sex stereotyping, secured a broader definition of sex discrimination, remedied equal pay violations, defended against pregnancy discrimination and sexual harassment, tackled occupational segregation, and sought higher wages for women.
We lead and support groundbreaking legislative initiatives to enact laws to expand economic security and workplace equality at the local, state, and federal levels. Our policy and legislative work have helped strengthen equal pay provisions, anti-sexual harassment laws, minimum wage requirements, paid leave benefits, and legal protections for pregnant women, women with children, survivors of domestic and sexual violence, and women working in male-dominated fields, among others. Today, we advocate to ensure that all women are protected under our laws, including the most vulnerable workers who for too long have been excluded from critical legal protections and denied access to equal economic opportunity.
Publishing comprehensive, intersectional guidance for women, advocates, community-based organizations, and worker leaders - we ensure that women have access to critical information on available legal protections, benefits, and resources to advance economic security and workplace safety and equality. In this way we maintain our commitment to providing targeted guidance to the most vulnerable women, including low-wage workers, immigrants, and survivors of domestic and sexual violence.
Since its founding in 2017, Women Valued has fought for the rights of working women across New York State and nationally, providing critical guidance to women and advocates on how to advance gender equality and economic security, and building coalitions to enact stronger legal protections and benefits for the most vulnerable women. Providing comprehensive support, the Initiative covers 13 core issue areas that touch upon women's economic equality.
