Advocate for working women to speak at the Constitution Center

Are women still being discriminated against at work?

That will be the topic of conversation at an event hosted by the National Constitution Center on Tuesday.

The event will focus on the new book by American Constitution Society president and former labor lawyer Caroline Fredrickson, “Under the Bus: How Working Women Are Being Run Over.”

Fredrickson wrote the book after hearing conversations about the careers of working women, but not much about the fact that many women simply need to hold down a job to support their families. She says laws to protect working women are positive steps, but that the country should do more to ensure paid leave and affordable childcare.

“We’ve heard too many stories about women who are kind of pushed to the wall and trying to hold down a job and can’t afford childcare — and then they leave their child alone and bam they get in trouble,” Fredrickson said. “And you understand you don’t want kids to be left alone, but what are these women supposed to do when we don’t provide them any alternative?”

Citizens should be proud of national laws passed to protect working women, according to Fredrickson, but they haven’t done enough.

“Even for someone like me who had practiced labor law and had written articles on employment law, I was really surprised at how little I knew about the kinds of workers and the numbers of workers that were left out of our protections,” she said. “And that was really what I was trying to convey in ‘Under the Bus’ — was that, we can’t pat ourselves on the back too much because there’s actually a lot that remains to be done.”

Admission to the event is free but reservations are recommended.