Center for WorkLife Law Receives Rockefeller Family Fund Grant Money

The Center for WorkLife Law welcomed in the New Year with the receipt of a $50,000 grant from the Rockefeller Family Fund in New York, NY.

The grant is a continuation—the fifth in a series—of general operating funds in support of the Center. It was approved by the Rockefeller Family Fund’s trustees in late 2011.

“This grant is to support our work on family responsibilities discrimination,” says Distinguished Professor of Law Joan C. Williams. Williams is also the founding director of the Center for WorkLife Law and is the Hastings Foundation chair.

“This kind of discrimination, which the Center for WorkLife Law put on the map, has now been shown to be the strongest form of gender bias: mothers are 79 percent less likely to be hired and 100 percent less likely to be promoted than identical women without children, according to a leading study by Shelley Correll and co-authors,” Williams says.

“Support from the Rockefeller Family Fund has enabled WorkLife Law to continue to work with employment lawyers (both plaintiffs and defense), the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Department of Labor, and public policymakers in California to eliminate discrimination against mothers and other adults with family caregiving responsibilities.”

The Rockefeller Family Fund (RFF) works at the cutting edge of advocacy in such areas as environmental protection, advancing the economic rights of women, and helping citizens hold public and private institutions accountable for their actions. The Fund distributes grants in four program areas, including Economic Justice for Women.

Economic Justice for Women grants support opportunities to promote economic justice. In particular, the program seeks to provide women with equitable employment opportunities and to improve their work lives. The Center for WorkLife Law has been supported by RFF since 2006.