Family Leave Policies

A new study by the Center for Women and Work at Rutgers University reports that working women who have paid family leave are much more likely to be working after the birth of a child and, most often, experience an increase in wage from pre- to post-birth.

The study analyzed information from the US Department of Labor between 1997 and 2009.  Among the findings, the study noted that since the mid-1980s, there has been a 13% increase (now nearly 73%) in the percentage of children with both parents (or the only parent) working outside the home.  And despite a tremendous amount of rhetoric about “family values,” “support for working families,” and “keeping our children secure,” the United States lags far behind other industrialized nations when it comes to policies that support workers needing time off for family time and needs.

Except for only a few states, practice in this country is limited to unpaid leave, despite 1993’s passage of the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA), which requires that companies with a least 50 workers provide up to 12 weeks of leave (unpaid and not job-protected) annually “for their own health or the health of a family members.”  This leaves most employees to patch together sick time, vacation time, disability insurance, or unpaid time off to deal with personal or family health problems.  Most low-income workers have not vacation, sick leave, or PTO (Paid Time Off).

The United States in among the 3 countries (out of 178 – the others are Swaziland and Papua New Guinea) that do not mandate maternity paid leave.  And only 11% of private sector employees and 17% of public sector employees have access to paid leave through their employer. 

Specific key findings of the report include:

¬   Women who report taking paid leave are more likely to be working 9 to 12 months after a child’s birth than are those who report taking no leave at all (“non‐leave takers”).

¬   Paid family leave increases wages for women with children.  Women who report leaves of 30 or more days are 54% more likely to report wage increases in the year following the child’s birth than are women who take no leave at all.

¬   Women who return to work after a paid leave have a 39% lower likelihood of receiving public assistance and a 40% lower likelihood of food stamp receipt in the year following the child’s birth, when compared to those who return to work and take no leave at all.

¬   Men who return to work after a paid family leave have a significantly lower likelihood of receiving public assistance and food stamps in the year following the child’s birth when compared to those who return to work and take no family leave at all.

Linda Houser of the Center for Women and Work summarizes the positive economic benefit of paid leave policies:  "While we have known for a long time about the maternal and infant health benefits of leave policies, we can now link paid family leave to greater labor force attachment and increased wages for women, as well as to reduced spending by businesses in the form of employee replacement costs, and by governments in the form of public assistance."

Forbes magazine sums up the economic benefits of paid leave in this way:

1.     Paid family leave addresses a reality that directly impacts every business and should be planned for strategically, uniformly and deliberately,

2.     Paid family leave is NOT a tax, but income replacement insurance program funded by employees at minimal cost, and

3.     We are paying for a cost for caregiving already - indirectly and inefficiently, through employee turnover, retraining, and workplace productivity.

This is the type of information Chrysalis works to provide to policy makers through SOLUTIONS, our annual legislative breakfast.  Our work is to provide factual, objective information that should be taken into account when decisions – state, local, individual – are being made that affect girls, women, and working families.

Thank you for being a leader in this work.

If you’d like to read the full report:  http://www.nationalpartnership.org/site/DocServer/Pay_Matters_-_Positive_Economic_Impacts_of_Paid_Family_L.pdf?docID=9681

Election History

I’m certain that “election exhaustion” finally hit us all this week, and we’re happy to never see a scowling politician’s face or hear the ominous background music of the thousands of negative ads.

Today, our Board President sent me an article that share some brighter news from election results:

­  20 women were elected to the U.S. Senate – the most ever

­  77 women (with a few races still uncertain) were elected to the House of Representatives

­  the first Asian-American woman, Mazie Hirono, was elected to the Senate – she is also the first Senator born in Japan and Buddhist

­  Massachusetts has elected its first female Senator, Elisabeth Warren

­  a 31-year-old female Iraqi war veteran, Tulsi Gabbard, who is also Hindu, was elected to Congress

­  Tammy Baldwin, the first openly gay person, and the first woman Wisconsin has elected, has a new seat in the Senate

­  Iraqi war veteran and triple amputee Tammy Duckworth take a seat in Congress

­  Claire McCaskill defeated Todd Akin to retain her seat

­  New Hampshire, which elected a female governor this year, will send the first all-female congressional delegation to Washington

2012 is also a year setting a record in the number of 28 minority women elected: 13 African American, 9 Latinas, and 6 Asian/Pacific Islanders.

The Huffington Post summarized women’s impact on the election:  Women proved once and for all that female voters are paying attention, and that their support wins elections.  Obama would not have been able to win the election without the support from women – female voters made up 54% of the electorate and favored the President by 11%, resulting in an 18-point gender gap.

In a country that is more than half female (50.8%) with an electorate over half, one in five Senators will be women, and 18.13% of Representatives will be female – nearly an 8% increase since the 2008 election.

We’ve come a long way since Jeannette Rankin was elected as the first female in Washington in 1917…but there’s a long way yet to go.

Jeannette Rankin (right) on April 2, 1917, with Carrie Chapman Catt, president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, at the group’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. Later that historic day, Rankin was officially sworn into the 65th Congress.

To read the article from policymic:  http://www.policymic.com/articles/18780/mazie-hirono-and-tammy-duckworth-women-make-history-on-election-night

Thank you for working on behalf of 50.8% of our population with 110% of your energy.

Gender Pay Disparity

Terry Hernandez, Executive Director of Chrysalis, just completed a television interview with WHO TV13 regarding the continued gender pay disparity.  When she asked the reporter what prompted interest in this issue, she noted the report in today's DES MOINES REGISTER listing salaries of state employees.

Once again, we need to count down to the 21st name on this list to find the first female: women's head basketball coach Lisa Bluder.  This is distressing enough, but our frustration should be compounded by the fact that her annual salary is less than half the salary of the lowest paid men's head basketball coach - and in this case, former men's basketball coach Todd Lickliter.

In the recently- released report SHE MATTERS, it was reported that in Iowa, women still make only 79% of what a man with equal education and experience is paid.  Calculating what this inequity means in today's dollars, if a woman (average salary $34,534) were to use the dollars represented by the gap (average salary for a man is $43,872), she could buy one of the following:

- 2,312 more gallons of gasoline

- 82 more weeks worth of groceries

- 14 more months of rent payments

- 8 more months of mortgage and utility payments

- 29 more months of family health insurance premiums

Today Chrysalis presented this information - in addition to the other disparities of note - to a group of women in higher education across the state, then at a workshop on teen pregnancy prevention.  We agree that, even though the Equal Pay Act was signed nearly 50 years ago, we are still far from being paid equally when our experience and education are the same.

Our work continues to be both to educate our community and stakeholders about issues like this, and to provide solutions to such problems.  Even more important, then, is our work teaching girls to advocate for themselves and be bold in asking for what they need, our work helping women become employed in "nontraditional" jobs that may pay higher wages, and our work in the corporate community to help leaders understand the reality and create workplaces that are more female- and family-friendly.

Simple things like flexible work schedules, onsite services such as ATMs or child care, and family medical leave will help keep women in the workplace as a skilled talent pool.  And these are the types of workplace benefits new young professionals should request as they seek careers.

Women's Equality Day

Did you know that last Sunday, August 26 was a historic day for women?  Ninety-two years ago, U.S. women won the right to vote after many years of painstaking struggle and hard work by courageous suffragists.  This historic moment is commemorated each year on Women’s Equality Day, August 26.

As you know, much of the work to ensure equality for women remains unfinished.  Among the many factors that have attempted to move the needle on equality for women and girls is CEDAW, an international agreement affirming principles of human rights and equality for women and girls around the world.  Adopted by the United Nations in 1979, 185 countries have ratified CEDAW (Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women), creating standards in the treatment and rights of women.

The United States is among 6 countries across the globe that has not yet ratified CEDAW: The Treaty for the Rights of Women, the most complete international agreement on basic human rights for women.  (Among the other countries yet to ratify are Iran, Sudan, and Somalia.)

In countries that have ratified CEDAW, women have partnered with their governments to improve the status of women and girls, and as a result have changed laws and policies to create greater safety and opportunity for women and their families. CEDAW can make a difference for women and girls, specifically to:

×          reduce sex trafficking & domestic violence

×          provide access to education & vocational training

×          ensure the right to vote

×          end forced marriage & child marriage & ensure inheritance rights

×          help mothers and families by providing access to maternal health care

×          ensure the right to work & own a business without discrimination

Because of CEDAW, millions of girls around the world receive primary education; countries have taken measures against sex slavery, domestic violence and trafficking of women and girls; women’s health care services have focused on saving lives during pregnancy and childbirth; and millions of women now have the opportunity to secure loans and the right to own and inherit property.  To learn more:  www.womenstreaty.org

All the more important for the work of Chrysalis to be strategic, meaningful, and results-oriented.  

March is Women's History Month

As you may know, March is Women’s History Month, and March 8 is International Women's Day!  Here’s a bit of history on how this day came to be…

1908:  15,000 women marched through New York City demanding shorter work hours, better pay and voting rights.

1909:  In conjunction with a declaration by the Socialist Party of America, the first National Woman's Day (NWD) was observed across the United States on February 28.

1910:  At the 2^nd International Conference of Working Women in Copenhagen, a woman named a Clara Zetkin proposed that every year in every country there should be a celebration on the same day - a Women's Day – to raise awareness and create change.

The conference of over 100 women from 17 countries representing unions, socialist parties, working women's clubs, and including the first three women elected to the Finnish parliament, unanimously approved the establishment of International Women's Day.

1911:  International Women's Day was recognized for the first time across the European continent, and more than one million women and men attended rallies campaigning for women's rights to work, vote, be trained, to hold public office, and to end discrimination.

Less than a week after this rally, the tragic 'Triangle Fire' in New York City took the lives of more than 140 working women, most of them Italian and Jewish immigrants, drawing significant attention to working conditions and labor legislation in the United States.

1913:  On the eve of World War I and campaigning for peace, Russian women observed their first International Women's Day on the last Sunday in February 1913.  Also that year, International Women's Day was moved to March 8.

1975:  This year was designated as “International Women's Year” by the United Nations.

2010:  IWD is now an official holiday across the world, with a tradition of recognizing and honoring women.  In some countries, the day has the equivalent status of Mother's Day where children give small presents to their mothers and grandmothers.

Take a moment to celebrate the work of Chrysalis on International Women’s Day, and enjoy watching this wonderful history of how innovation by women have affected women in the workplace.  The video was created by Kronos, the company that created time clocks for the workplace:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=eaf_X9qSeVY

Women and Political Office

Here’s a startling statistic: Women are 50% less likely than men to seriously consider running for office, and 33% less likely to view themselves as qualified.

This is the finding of NAME IT. CHANGE IT., a non-partisan project of the Women’s Campaign Forum (WCF) Foundation, the Women’s Media Center, and Political Parity – all organized to end sexist coverage of women and women candidates by the press, from bloggers to television anchors.

As we know, widespread sexism in all media is likely one of the greatest problems facing women today.  For women in the polical world, this toxicity affects their campaigns, their lives, and occasionally, their very being.

Launched by Gloria Steinem in August of 2010, NAME IT. CHANGE IT. takes on all media platforms in an endeavor to erase the sexism women candidates face, regardless of the level of office or policital party.  NAME IT. CHANGE IT. believes that when you attack one women, you attack all women.

Here’s the litmus test for determining if journalists are being fair, which they refer to as “The Reversibility Test” -

“The most workable definition of equality for journalists is reversibility.  Don't mention her young children unless you would also mention his, or describe her clothes unless you would describe his, or say she's shrill or attractive unless the same adjectives would be applied to a man.

“Don't say she's had facial surgery unless you say he dyes his hair or has hair plugs.  Don't say she's just out of graduate school but he's a rising star.  Don't say she has no professional training but he worked his way up.  Don't ask her if she's running as a women's candidate unless you ask him if he's running as a men's candidate; ask both about the gender gap, the women's vote.

“By extension, don't say someone is a Muslim unless you also identify Christians and Jews, or identify only some people by race, ethnicity or sexuality and not others.  However, this does NOT mean being even-handedly positive or negative when only one person or side has done something positive or negative. Equality allows accuracy.”

WFC Foundation has collected a tremendous amount of research validating the work to eliminate sexism and its disastrous effects.  According to Rutgers’s University, 1/3 or women say that someone tried to discourage them from running for office – most often a political party official or an existing officeholder.  If a woman candidate isn’t married, both male and female voters perceive her as less likely to share their own family values.  And on the influential Sunday morning political talk shows, male guests outnumber female guests 4 to 1.

Women’s confidence also lags behind men’s.  “Research shows that among equally qualified men and women, men say, ‘Yes, I’d make a great Senator!’ while women say, ‘No, I couldn’t do that job,’” according to the director of Political Parity.

The work of organizations such as the Women’s Campaign Fund, the White House Project, the Women’s Media Center, and Political Parity all center around finding, training, and supporting women to run for elected office – any party, any office.  Their continuing efforts are working to double the number of women in Congress and in governorships in 10 years, and to advance women’s leadership in all sectors and all communities.  This work is to ensure that all institutions, businesses, and government is truly representative of our country.

This is why we so strongly believe that leadership development is a responsibility of Chrysalis.  And this is the theme in our upcoming Chrysalis Conversations series – that women’s leadership, and the wisdom it brings, can shape a more equitable culture.  Enhancing the confidence of women, and ensuring the confidence of the public in women’s leadership, can change everything.

If you’d like to know more about NAME IT. CHANGE IT.: http://www.nameitchangeit.org/