Read below for our top four picks from this week’s Economic Equality News! Want to receive it directly to your inbox? Sign up here!

1. Your “Mommy Penalty” Is Rising, Espically if You are UnWed Washington Post- In a study released Tuesday,Columbia University and Russell Sage Foundation scholar Jane Waldfogel finds that U.S. mothers in their prime-working years (usually defined as 25 to 44 years old) face a roughly 5% “motherhood wage penalty” in the workplace relative to childless women workers, a figure she estimates hasn’t improved much since the late 1970s.

2. Fresh off the President’s Desk: Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces Executive Order The White House- The Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces Executive Order will govern new federal procurement contracts valued at more than $500,000, providing information on companies’ compliance with federal labor laws for agencies.  We expect the Executive Order to be implemented on new contracts in stages, on a prioritized basis, during 2016.  The Department of Labor estimates that there are roughly 24,000 businesses with federal contracts, employing about 28 million workers.

3. Five Hundred and Eighty-Six Lawsuits. Violations against the Family & Medical Leave Act Are Up National Partnership for Women and Families- Employees in 2013 filed 877 lawsuits against their employers for allegedly violating the Family and Medical Leave Act, up from 291 in 2012, according to data from the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts.

4. #InspireHerMind: Big Box Commerical Companies Investing for Girls in STEM

5. So who really gets all the days off? Managers are nearly twice as likely as service workers to get paid time off Washington Post- Overall, 77 percent of American workers get paid vacation time, unchanged since 2010. Perhaps not surprisingly, management professionals are the most likely to get paid vacation time — 96 percent. At the other end of the spectrum, only 55 percent of service industry employees get paid vacation days.