News to note 📝 : Congress labors over pregnancy discrimination bill, update on Gov. Cuomo allegations, EU’s new pay gap rules & more

The difficult birth of a pregnancy discrimination bill. Eight years, six legislative sessions and thousands of lawsuits — that’s how long Congress has labored over a bill that would provide pregnant women with clearer protections at work. Dina Bakst of workers advocacy nonprofit A Better Balance: “Pregnant workers literally need to jump through legal hoops to prove that they’re being treated worse than others.” [NYT]

Charlotte Bennett, one of the women accusing Gov. Andrew Cuomo of sexual harassment, detailed multiple instances in which the governor allegedly made inappropriate comments. Cuomo is facing similar allegations from two other women, Lindsey Boylan, the former chief of staff at New York’s state economic agency, and Anna Ruch, the only accuser who did not work for the governor. Charlotte Bennett, a former executive assistant to Cuomo: “The fact is that he was sexually harassing me and he has not apologized for sexually harassing me.” [CBS]

EU moves to end gender pay gap with transparency rules. Under the proposal, European companies could face fines for violating equal wage rules. On average, women get paid 14.1 percent less an hour than men, which means they have to work an additional 51 days to earn the same wages as their male colleagues. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen: “Women must know whether their employers treat them fairly. And when this is not the case, they must have the power to fight back and get what they deserve.” [WSJ]

A Black Amazon manager is suing company executives in a discrimination and sexual harassment and assault case. Charlotte Newman, an Amazon senior manager and former economic policy adviser to Sen. Cory Booker, is suing the tech giant and two of its current executives for alleged race and gender discrimination and for allegedly violating the Equality Pay Act. Charlotte Newman: “There’s been deep emotional pain … All of the hard work, all of the sacrifices I made, my education — none of that saved me from someone who’s a predator and living in fear of what else he might do.” [Vox]

The Tokyo Olympic Games organising committee is set to add 12 new female directors to its executive board. The move comes weeks after long-time president Yoshiro Mori was forced to quit for making sexist remarks. Tokyo Olympics President Seiko Hashimoto: “I believe that it is necessary to take swift action and provide solid results in order to rebuild trust in the organising committee.” [BBC]

About half (49 percent) of late-stage private company boards are all male. 
But that’s an improvement from 60 percent a year earlier. Only 11 percent of board seats at these companies are held by women and, at the companies that do have female directors, they’re usually the only one. Fewer than 5 percent of board seats are held by women of color. [Crunchbase]