Workers– women and men alike -- are increasingly forced to sign arbitration agreements as a condition of getting hired.  That means if they learn about pay discrimination or they are sexually harassed on the job, they can’t go to court – they’re forced to go to arbitration instead.  And most of the time the arbitrator is chosen by -- you guessed it --the company of course.

A unique kind of bracket was created this year by the American Association of University Women. They ranked schools on how big the head coaching pay gaps were between men's and women's teams.  Coaches of women's teams are getting shortchanged -- by a lot -- at every school in the tournament.  UConn's women’s basketball squad has a better record than the men's team, but women’s head coaches get only 49% the dollars showered on their male counterparts.   Florida pays women’s team coaches only 21% of what the men’s coaches get, Kentucky 22%, and Wisconsin 26%.

According to a couple of case coming up before the Supreme Court, the United States, which was founded on the principle of religious freedom, has now become a bastion of religious persecution.  The oppressed group?  American business.  Hobby Lobby and others are claiming they’re being persecuted for their faith.  Didn’t know a business could be a member of a church?  I didn’t either. I Never saw one being baptized, celebrating a bar mitzvah or making a pilgrimage to Mecca.

There’s some new news for women on the job front -- and as usual, it’s good and it’s bad.  The good? Unlike men, women have actually regained more jobs than they lost in the recession, and their unemployment rate is under 6.4 percent.  The bad news is they’re lousy jobs.

This year on International Women’s Day we honor two female members of the Resistance during World War II, who were imprisoned in the Ravensbrück women's concentration camp. Germaine Tillion Geneviève de Gaulle and will be interred in the Pantheon. They will join 72 men and only two other females -- Marie Curie, and the wife of a French politician who was buried with her husband. The motto above the door states: "To great men, a grateful country."  At long last, it may now also become a monument to great women.

If you look only at the categories for acting, women come in for an equal share of the Oscars.  But peeking behind the velvet curtains, a different picture emerges.  Women are still a tiny minority in the movie business overall -- so much so the lack of opportunity has been dubbed the "celluloid ceiling." An interview with Women and Hollywood founder Melissa Silverstein.

Football star Michael Sam made a bit of Black history when he came out as gay this month.  To do that ahead of the NFL draft took a lot of courage.  Sam will no doubt be remembered as a groundbreaker, but he couldn’t have done it without groundbreakers before him – like Coretta Scott King.  Remembered for civil rights marches in the ‘60s alongside her husband, most don’t realize she was an early advocate for gay rights as well.  Includes audio from one of her speeches.

In the all the years we've celebrated President's Day, we've never honored a female president, because we've never had one.  It's not that women haven't tried, starting with Victoria Woodhull in 1870.  Eleven more women have run since then.  Could it be time for a female in the White House? 2016 might be our lucky number.

For the first time in history, women outnumbered men on the 2012 U.S. Olympic team, and even bested the men in gold medals.  This year in Sochi the gender ratio slipped a little. With 105 women and 125 men, women make up 45% of the team, even though ski jumping is open to females for the first time.

But if you look behind the numbers for women athletes, you see that the Olympics are still very much an old boys club when it comes to the ruling bodies that control the games, and that may be why sexism is still rampant.  

President Obama had some inspiring words for women in this year's State of the Union Speech.  But we've heard good words before. Can he turn rhetoric into reality?