When the Obamas move to Washington, they will establish a dream household in America's most storied house. They will also follow a tried and true pattern in today's modern, egalitarian-minded capitalist societies. More often than not, men get jobs and the family moves, with wives and children following the...

The white-knuckle moments on election night were fewer than many people expected. One source of fear had been the suspicion that the polls were wrong. Even after the networks started projecting winners, people with memories that reach back to 2000 were still sweating (after all, ABC projected Pennsylvania with no...

DeWayne McKinney, who served 19 years in prison for a murder he didn't commit, made a name for himself as the man who wasn't bitter, who wouldn't devote his reclaimed life's energies to resentment and recrimination. He famously invited the judge who sentenced him...

Why is nursing home care so often so bad?

The latest bad news shows that "more than 90% of nursing homes were cited violations of federal health and safety standards last year." This follows an investigation by the New York Times last year, which found that investor-owned nursing...

Advocates for children with disabilities are mostly unimpressed by Sarah Palin's profession of support for children with disabilities, based on her history and policy positions. But the attention generated by her use of the issue should be good for something.

In fact, disabilities play a large, and...

John McCain tried to get out of his recent gaffe on the "fundamentals" of the economy by repeating a common mantra for American politicians, describing American workers - the fundamentals themselves - as the "most productive" and "hardest working" in the world. New York Times columnist Bob Herbert,...

A key battleground demographic for Obama is blue-collar women. By concentrating on the pay equity issue, Obama is going after women who are not only in blue-collar families, but who themselves are blue-collar workers.

Obama should find fertile ground for this message. Except among the highest earners, women...

Sarah Palin supporters express enthusiasm for a woman with a handful of children, including an infant with disabilities, balancing motherhood with a high pressure, more-than-full-time job. But that forward thinking -- which has a slight feeling of protesting too much -- is belied by the red-blue facts on...

After Sarah Palin inserted the term "glass ceiling" into the Republican lexicon, Barack Obama increased the profile of his own references to gender equality. In Ohio on September 3, he pledged, "When I am president of the United States, we are going to pass equal pay for equal work....

Concern and activism over "work-family balance" increasingly focuses on the policy and political bottlenecks that prevent people from successfully caring for themselves and their family members while satisfying their career needs and ambitions. This is an improvement over the self-oriented focus on individual achievement that...

When Usain Bolt broke the world record in the 100 meter footrace, did that mean the average speed of humans on earth has increased? No. People may be faster on average than they were 1000 years ago, what with improved health and nutrition, but we've also got more old...

During the first decade of her megastarhood, Madonna perfected not only the arts of pop music, bothering feminists, arousing boys (and girls), and wearing her underwear on the outside, but -- maybe uniquely -- the ability to use feminism to generate controversy and promote herself commercially. On the occasion of...

For men and women to be equally distributed across occupations, about half (46%) of either group would have to change occupations. That's progress from 62% segregation in 1960. But it was already down to 48% in 1990, so we're pretty well stalled.

Lots of people work in...

Today's most emailed story at the New York Times is Tuesday's report on how economic hard times are affecting women's employment rates: "After moving into virtually every occupation, women are being afflicted on a large scale by the same troubles as men: downturns, layoffs, outsourcing, stagnant wages or the...

The latest news in the opt-out wars comes from two Berkeley economists - Jane Leber Herr and Catherine Wolfram - who report on a study of almost 1,000 Harvard graduates at their 15th reunion. Their main finding is that the profession these women went into had big effects...