Celebrating Policy Wins for Women & Families

On January 12, 2017, the Stronger California Advocates Network, a collaboration of over thirty organizations and advocate coalitions from around the state working in partnership with the Legislative Women’s Caucus to promote policy reforms that improve the economic strength of women and families, kicked off the new legislative cycle with a Policy Convening and Reception in Sacramento.

Advocates from around the state came together with legislators and staff to discuss policy priorities for the coming year to combat poverty and promote asset building, expand access to child care and early childhood education, ensure fair pay and job opportunities and support working families.

We also celebrated incredible past wins from the Stronger California Legislative Agenda, including: passage of the strongest equal pay law in the country; repeal of the regressive and harmful Maximum Family Grant rule; an increase to the minimum wage critical to keep hard-working people out of poverty; passage of the domestic worker bill of rights, which made permanent the right to overtime pay for domestic workers; increased Paid Family Leave benefit wage replacement rates to better support workers taking leave to care for a new child or sick relative; and, increased funding for child care in the budget.

Equal Rights Advocates Executive Director Noreen Farrell, who chairs the Stronger CA Advocates Network, opened the reception with remarks putting the Stronger CA agenda in the context of the federal election. Now more than ever, we need to push progressive reform in California, which is home to 12% of the country’s women. 

Among the speakers at the reception, we were honored to have Senator Hannah-Beth Jackson, outgoing Chair of the Legislative Women’s Caucus, Assemblymember Lorena Gonzalez, and Lupita Cortez Alcala, Chair of the California Commission on the Status of Women, all of whom are tireless champions of women’s rights.

We also recognized Kate Karpilow for her tremendous contributions to women and families in California and celebrated the Stronger California Legislative Champions who made our legislative and budget wins possible:

Stronger CA 2016 Legislative Champions

Assembly Members –

Luis Alejo
Joaquin Arambula
Richard Bloom
Rob Bonta
Susan Bonilla
Cheryl Brown
Autumn Burke
Ian Calderon
Nora Campos
Ed Chau
David Chiu
Ken Cooley
Jim Cooper
Matthew Dababneh
Susan Talamantes Eggman
Jim Frazier
Cristina Garcia
Eduardo Garcia
Mike Gatto
Mike Gipson
Jimmy Gomez
Lorena Gonzalez
Richard Gordon
Chris Holden
Jacqui Irwin
Reginald Jones-Sawyer
Marc Levine
Patty Lopez
Evan Low
Kevin McCarty
Jose Medina
Kevin Mullin
Adrian Jazarian
Bill Quirk
Speaker Anthony Rendon
Sebastian Ridley-Thomas
Freddie Rodriguez
Miguel Santiago
Mark Stone
Tony Thurmond
Philip Ting
Shirley Weber
Das Williams
Jim Wood

Senators –

Ben Allen
Toni Atkins
Jim Beall
Marty Block
President pro Tempore Kevin de Leon
Bill Dodd
Cathleen Galgiani
Isadore Hall
Lori Hancock
Ed Hernandez
Bob Hertzberg
Jerry Hill
Ben Hueso
Hannah-Beth Jackson
Ricardo Lara
Mark Leno
Connie Leyva
Carol Liu
Mike McGuire
Tony Mendoza
Holly Mitchell
William Monning
Richard Pan
Fran Pavley
Bob Wieckowski
Lois Wolk

As we celebrate the successes of this historic collaboration, we gear up for an exciting year ahead as there is still much work to be done. Please join us at www.StrongerCA.org

See all photos from the event here.