California NOW

It's 2013! Isn't it time to focus on gender equity?

In a few days, we'll begin celebrating Women's History Month. Throughout the month, we'll hear a lot of speeches from government officials about how they believe in gender equality and women's empowerment.

That's a good thing! But an even better way to celebrate Women's History Month would be for legislators to ask one basic question before they pass another bill or implement another policy - What is the gender impact?

Gender equality is the law!  We've found no constitutional or statutory exception to gender equality mandates.  There's no language stating anti-discrimination statutes and equal protection of laws apply to women and girls only if they don’t cost too much.

Therefore, California NOW will begin persistently demanding that state and local governments follow the law by ensuring that analysis of budget decisions, legislation, policies and programs include a gender impact statement.

The failure to find out the actual impact of budget decisions, laws and policies year-in and year-out is simply unacceptable, especially in 2013. It is time for California government to ensure compliance with equal protection standards and anti-discrimination laws.  Such a task cannot be done if state and local governments fail to collect data on gender equality and anti-discrimination compliance and make that data available to the public.  The failure to enact outcome and/or performance-based decision making to the budget, as well as policies and programs, has produced an unaccountable state and local government that fails to ensure gender equality and that further fails to promote women and girls empowerment. It’s time to put an end to such failures.

Click here to read our letter.

We have a super majority in both Houses and a Democratic Governor. The time for excuses is over. If we really want to move towards full equity, join me in asking for more than words this year.

Together, let's insist that legislation and policies coming out of Sacramento have a gender impact statement attached to them. The nearly 19 million women and girls in California deserve - and should settle for - nothing less.

Equality at the Polls

We talk a lot about gender inequality.  How women represent over 50 percent of our state's population yet only comprise 28 percent of the state legislature. And how we earn just 84 cents for every dollar our male counterparts make here in California.

But at the ballot box, our vote counts every bit as much as any man's vote. Actually, our votes count more because there's more women registered to vote in California than men.

So let's not miss out on an important election that will set the direction of our country. And in many ways, the direction for women's equality. Do we want a president who isn't sure the Lilly Ledbetter Act was a good piece of legislation and who's gone back-and-forth on the question of pay equity? A president who chose as his running mate a man who is so stridently anti-choice that he thinks women and girls who are raped should be forced to carry the rapists' child? Do we want California Congressional members who share those same radical anti-women beliefs, who voted to cut HeadStart, rationalizing that vote by saying there is no need for the program because women should be home taking care of their children? Do we want state legislators who say that pay equity would bankrupt California?

If you think you're too busy to vote this year or that you can't decide who to vote for, think about what has taken place in just the past two years. Calling it "a war on women" is not an overstatement. It's the truth.

Here's the bottom-line. If we want gender equality and women's empowerment, then we are going to need to demand it. And that means taking responsibility for who we elect to represent us in our local communities, in Sacramento and in Washington. We ARE the majority so if anti-women candidates win again this year, that's on us.

We need to make sure that at every level, we are voting for candidates who respect and value women and we need to educate every other woman - and man - we know to do the same. I know it sounds overly dramatic but the truth is, this year our lives depend on it!

2012 California NOW Activist

The state Legislature is in recess and everyone has returned to their home districts to campaign for the November 2012 election, which is now just 29 days away.  For those of you who are absentee voters, your ballot is on the way, so we wanted you - the California voter - to have the facts about what's at stake for women before casting your vote.

This year's propositions are enormously important for California's women and girls, especially for their equality and empowerment.  Read the Activist to find out why voting NO on Prop 31 and 32 matters - why voting YES on Prop 38 and 39 is a better path forward and why voting YES on Prop 34, 36 and 37 is the better choice for women and their families.  Click here to read the 2012 Activist.

Read the Activist because it shows what happens when women stay home - only 24 percent of unmarried women voted in the 2010 election.  As a result, the anti-women extremists who took control of the House voted 12 times to restrict women's reproductive health care, redefine rape, cut ALL Title X funding, and voted against the Fair Pay Act and the Violence Against Women Act.

EVERY SINGLE CALIFORNIA REPUBLICAN CONGRESS MEMBER VOTED FOR THOSE EXTREME BILLS.

We hope you'll be joining us in doing our part to demand Congress be Pro Woman.  Click here to access the California NOW PAC 2012 Voter Guide.

There is no doubt that this year and the previous years have been a struggle for all of us both economically and politically.  As Hillary Clinton stated, "The big challenge we face in these early years of the 21st century is how to grow our economies and ensure shared prosperity for all nations and all people. We want to give every one of our citizens, men and women, young and old, greater opportunity to find work, save and spend money, pursue happiness – and ultimately live up to their God-given potential. That is a clear and simple vision. But to make it real – to achieve the economic expansion we all seek – we need to unlock a vital source of growth that can power our economies in the decades to come. That source of vital growth is women."

California's women should expect and accept nothing less.

For Equality & In Solidarity,

 

Patty Bellasalma
President, California NOW

The very REAL war on women!

The stakes in this election couldn't be higher, especially for women.  Since 2010, radical right-wing Republicans have gone after women with a vengeance.  The House GOP voted 12 times last year to restrict women’s reproductive healthcare, tried to eliminate Title X funding, attempted to redefine rape, held a panel on contraception without allowing a single woman to testify and decided not to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act.  Every single House GOP member (including those from California) voted to allow hospitals to deny abortion care to a woman – even if her life was at stake.

The war on women is not a figment of anyone’s imagination – it is very real.

And when Todd Akin tries to differentiate between “legitimate” and “non-legitimate” rape or Paul Ryan tries to take away a women’s right to choose - even in cases of rape and incest - they aren’t speaking on behalf of some fringe of the Republican Party—they are speaking on behalf of the Republican Party establishment in 2012.

Republican candidates are attempting to defend their anti-woman record and put a mask on the war on women.  But the ugliness of the ideology comes through all too clear.  They want us to believe that the words "legitimate" and "forcible" rape are used by Akin, Ryan and other GOP members as attempts by these well-meaning men to separate out "acts that don't rise to the definition of 'real' rape."

Akin, Ryan and other GOP House members say that 'real' rape is something to be distinguished from rapes where a woman is drugged or given excessive amounts of alcohol, rapes of women with limited mental capacity, statutory rapes or incest.  They see these as illegal, but not having the same moral force as 'real' rape, which they define as when a woman is assaulted at knifepoint.  Just like South Dakota Senator Bill Napoli who says the only type of rape that might merit an exception to his state’s anti-abortion law would have to involve brutally savaging a girl who was a virgin, religious and saving herself for marriage because she might be too physically or psychologically affected to carry a child to full term.

On behalf of women, let me clarify something.  Rape is rape.

The fact is that Todd Akin, Paul Ryan and the Republican Party have all tried to, or promised to, parse the word ‘rape’ in order to narrow a woman’s ability to protect herself and be protected by the judicial system. They have attempted to deny women access to contraception, and they have attempted to reduce or deny a woman’s access to family planning services.  They have attempted to roll back the clock on rights for women -- all in the name of an extreme ideology that does not reflect the values of the vast majority of the residents of this country or this county.

That's why California NOW is calling on women across our state - and our nation - to get involved in this election.  Our very lives are at stake.

Domestic Workers Bill of Rights

Today is Labor Day.  A day we celebrate the American worker and the basic rights they enjoy.

Today is also a day that a great injustice can be corrected.  Right now there is a piece of legislation on Governor Brown's desk that serves to end a discriminatory practice for California’s 200,000 domestic workers.  It's AB 889 - the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights.

Domestic workers - comprised of housekeepers, nannies, and caregivers for children, the elderly, and the disabled - work in private households to care for the health, safety and well-being of many Californians’ families and homes.

The vast majority of domestic workers are women of color and immigrants who, because they labor in private households and out of the public eye, are particularly vulnerable to unlawful employment practices and abuses. This bill seeks to provide domestic workers with equal labor rights and protections.

AB 889 would provide domestic workers with basic rights that other workers have enjoyed in this country for decades.  Those rights include overtime pay, meal and rest breaks and sleep in adequate conditions for live-in workers.  Domestic workers have been excluded from these basic protections for generations – while taking care of what we value most - our loved ones and our homes.

AB 889 has made it through the Assembly and the State Senate so now it's up to the governor.  By signing this bill, he has the opportunity to end generations of exclusion from basic labor protections and to right a historic wrong.

Click here to learn more about this important piece of legislation and how you can contact Governor Brown's office.