The passage of the bill is a true victory for working moms (who have commonly been subject to hostility for pumping in the workplace) and for the New York State Bar’s Sex & Law Committee that has been pushing for its passage.

Read the bill here:

As one college counselor says, “students care about the dating scene on campus,” so colleges have a “prerogative” to admit lesser-qualified men (instead of more, better-qualified women) to maintain this balance. Any takers?

Alex Kingsbury writes in US News:

The University of Richmond, like many small liberal arts colleges, has its roots in single-sex education. The campus, which sits on a picturesque 350 acres of woodland a few miles outside the Virginia state capital, was once two schools: Westhampton and Richmond Colleges, situated on opposite sides of a small lake. The campuses merged around the turn of the 20th century, creating the coed institution that exists today. Despite—and partly because of—its history, the delicate balance between men and women at Richmond has always been a tricky thing to manage.

These days, the student body is 49 percent male and 51 percent female—a ratio that the college insists is determined by the availability of on-campus housing. Maintaining that equilibrium, however, has in the past few years meant rejecting many more female applicants than male ones. In practical terms, in the past decade, female applicants have faced an admissions rate that is an average 13 percentage points lower than that of their male peers just for the sake of keeping that girl-boy balance.

“From a philosophical standpoint, we’ve really discussed the benefits of keeping it about equal,” says Marilyn Hesser, a senior associate director of admissions at Richmond. “The board of trustees has said that the admissions office can go as far as 55-45 [women to men].” Male and female applicants to the school have test scores that are virtually the same, she says. “Was their [male applicants'] high school GPA a little lower? Perhaps.”

The University of Richmond is by no means unique in its challenge to keep the number of men and women enrolled roughly equal in the face of a dramatically changing pool of applicants. Nor is it the school where the gap in admissions rates is the most pronounced. Using undergraduate admissions rate data collected from more than 1,400 four-year colleges and universities that participate in the magazine’s rankings, U.S. News has found that over the past 10 years many schools are maintaining their gender balance by admitting men and women at sometimes drastically different rates.

The schools that are most competitive—Harvard, Duke, and Rice for example—have so many applicants and so many high achievers that they naturally maintain balanced student bodies by skimming the cream of the crop. But in the tier of selective colleges just below them, maintaining gender equity on some campuses appears to require a thumb on the scale in favor of boys. It’s at these schools, including Pomona, Boston College, Wesleyan University, Tufts, and the College of William and Mary, that the gap in admit rates is particularly acute.

The reason for these lower admissions rates for female students is simple, if bitterly ironic: From the early grades on up, girls tend to be better students. By the time college admissions come into the picture, many watchers of the “boy gap” agree, it’s too late for the lads to catch up on their own. Indeed, beginning in those formative K-12 years, girls watch less television, spend less time playing sports, and are far less likely to find themselves in detention. They are more likely to participate in drama, art, and music classes—extracurriculars that are catnip for admissions officers. Across the board, girls study more, score better, and are less likely to find themselves in special education classes.

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The detailed news follows:

The law means that any job (with the exception of those working in the medical profession) between 8.00pm and 7.00am will be closed to the women of Kuwait.

The government also banned women from working in jobs that “contravene with public morals and in all-men service places at any time.”

Kuwaiti women won a four decade struggle last year when the were granted full political rights and allowed to partake in parliamentary elections for the first time in June 2006.

Of course, the lawyers raising the issue argue that a change in legal billing practice would benefit everyone, as all could benefit from working fewer hours. But one commenter says that while the change “is a good idea in theory … it’s going to be hard to do,” a rather unconvincing argument, especially for feminists: since when has it been easy to make any sort of major change?

The referenced article follows:

All in Favor of Axing the Billable Hour …

Zusha Elinson for The Recorder:

A group of Heller Ehrman lawyers is making bold recommendations — including doing away with the billable hour — to keep women from leaving their law firm careers.

Countering what has become known as the “opt-out revolution,” in which women ditch corporate America mid-career to be homemakers, the attorneys created what they call the opt-in project.

“We wanted to shift the discussion in this country from why women opt out to why women should opt in,” said Patricia Gillette, a longtime Heller partner who spearheaded the project. She delivered her remarks Thursday evening to a packed ballroom at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco, where the group presented its findings.

Studying how other professions have tackled the issue, the group laid out steps to eliminate obstacles — like the inflexibility of the hours-heavy grind and the low percentage of female leaders — that it says discourage women as well as an entire younger generation of lawyers from making a career at a big law firm.

Perhaps the most radical suggestion made by the opt-in project is to get rid of the billable hour. Lawyers should be measured by their productivity and efficiency instead, the group said.

“It’s a huge issue for woman and that’s because we still live in a world where woman still have more responsibility for raising children,” said Gillette. “It may cut into the hours you can bill, and yet it may not cut into your productivity.”

Although many say the billable hour harms both lawyer and client alike, few believe that the deeply ingrained currency of lawyer value is going away anytime soon.

“I think it’s a very good idea in theory,” said Ronald Beard, a law firm consultant with the Zeughauser Group. “The question is how — I think it’s going to be hard to do.”

Although Heller Ehrman sponsored the opt-in project, the firm hasn’t adopted the recommendations.

“This is not directed at Heller, this is directed at all law firms,” said Gillette.

Some audience members were a little disappointed that Heller wasn’t taking the step to actually adopt the policies, saying that if the firm did, it would be a big draw for them to join the firm.

“We all tend to do the same kind of work,” said one third-year litigator at a major firm who chose not to be identified. “Why wouldn’t you walk across the street if you knew you had a better shot at success?”

In striking contrast to the implicit bargain of the latest associate salary war (more money and more hours), the group is also calling for less money and less hours to stem attrition in the associate ranks. The group’s report cites one survey that found a 57 percent attrition rate for associates before their fifth year and another that found female associates were more likely to leave private practice than male associates.

Solutions could include letting young lawyers have more control over how much they work and how much they get paid — not unwelcome changes, said associates in attendance.

“As much as we make a stink when one firm or another raises, it’s really about relative worth,” said the third-year associate. “I would absolutely work less for less money and I can’t think of many people who wouldn’t.”

The group points toward an innovative program at accounting giant Deloitte called Mass Career Customization, which allows its employees to adjust the pace of their career to deal with personal obligations without throwing them off the upward track.

Law firms could do the same, they say, by doing away with the lockstep system on which associates are placed. Instead of basing salary and promotion on years out of law school, the group suggests a four-tiered approach where lawyers would advance based on their skills rather than their seniority, allowing people to advance at a pace that fits their lives.

The group also said the workday can be more flexible with the use of BlackBerrys and technology that rolls calls over from office phones to cell phones. But the group wants to protect personal time, too. They pointed to an accounting firm that puts a message on e-mails coming into and leaving the office after 7 p.m. on Fridays: “Are you sure you want to send this message or can it wait till Monday morning?”

While some law firms already have some of the recommended policies in place — many, for instance, have part-time policies and also allow attorneys to work from home — Gillette said she doesn’t expect firms to move quickly to adopt all or even a few of the recommendations. “What we’re really trying to do is to get people to start thinking differently,” she said.

What’s most appealing about the Act, though, is its availability to all workers; under the Act, women and men can take time off to care for a newborn child, allowing dads to play a larger role in caring for their children.

Here’s what the New York Times had to say about the Act last week.

Or check out the Working Families Party website for further information about the Act.

“An appearance by an ex-porn actress at the summer meeting of the New York State Bar Association’s Family Law Section has been canceled. Patrick C. O’Reilly, chair of the section, said yesterday he did not know of Sydnee Steele’s background in the adult video industry when he arranged in January for her to speak at the meeting. He canceled her July 13 appearance in deference to some attorneys who questioned the appropriateness of Ms. Steele’s presence, Mr. O’Reilly said. The topic of Ms. Steele’s planned talk was to have been “Sex and love—making your time away from the office really count and how not to wind up as one of your clients.” Mr. O’Reilly said Ms. Steele was not to have appeared on any of the continuing legal education programs planned for the July 12-15 weekend in Manchester Village, Vt. “It was basically an entertainment presentation at 9:15 one of the nights,” he said. “Her spiel is about relationships and making the best of your relationships.” Promotional materials for the meeting referred to Ms. Steele as an “internationally published author, speaker, and sexual empowerment consultant.” More than 300 people registered for last year’s summer meeting, Mr. O’Reilly said. Ms. Steele, 38, has said she retired from the adult video industry in 2005 after making more than 200 films and now works full time as an author and relationship consultant.”

Most troublesome is the fact that Ms. Steele is deemed unfit to present a speech about relationships to the Association due to her past employment history—whether she had been previously employed in the pornography industry or not, this information is simply irrelevant in the assessment of her ability to do the job she was hired to do at the meeting. And, perhaps not so surprisingly, Ms. Steele’s response to the situation is strangely absent.