Colorado Legislature: It's Time to Move Colorado's Women & Families Forward!

The Leadership of Colorado's State Legislature

As our state Capitol reels with incidents of sexual harassment, there is a very powerful way our elected officials could send a message of true culture change: by advancing a pro-woman and pro-family agenda that includes passing paid family leave and addressing gender- and race-based wage gaps. Sign this petition to urge the leadership of the Colorado Legislature to pass proactive policy that moves Colorado's women and families forward.

Signatures will be submitted to Senate President Kevin Grantham, Speaker of the House Crisanta Duran, House Minority Leader Patrick Neville, and Senate Minority Leader Lucia Guzman.

To: The Leadership of Colorado's State Legislature
From: [Your Name]

Dear Senators Grantham & Guzman and Representatives Duran & Neville:

We are writing to you, the leaders of the Colorado Legislature, with deep concern about the incidents of sexual harassment that have been reported in our Capitol. No doubt your response to these incidents is being scrutinized in the public eye. Many Coloradans feel that your actions will speak directly to whether the legislature is truly responsive to the needs and safety of women in our great state.

However, we feel that actual policy solutions to move women and families forward in Colorado are just as important as your direct response to this crisis. Indeed, we believe that there is no more powerful thing you could do to right the Colorado Legislature's ship in the eyes of our state's women and families than to advance a legislative agenda which moves our state forward in meeting the needs of said women and working families.

According to the National Partnership for Women & Families (NPWF), women in Colorado earn just 81 cents for every dollar paid to men. That gap is even worse for women of color in our state: NPWF documents that "Black women are paid 64 cents, Latinas are paid 54 cents and Asian women are paid 70 cents for every dollar paid to white, non-Hispanic men" when it comes to full-time non-seasonal jobs.* We also still do not have paid family leave in Colorado despite multiple efforts to advance this policy over the past few years. As a result, many working Colorado women are forced to make a seemingly impossible choice between taking unpaid time off to care for themselves or their loved ones and continuing to work despite personal or family health issues in order to keep food on the table and pay the bills.

Therefore, in this legislative session we urge you to advance a pro-woman and pro-working family agenda that includes implementing paid family leave and addressing wage inequality for women & people of color. We believe that this agenda would be a powerful and needed statement on the part of the Legislature that it stands with Colorado's women and working families.

Thank you and we look forward to your response.

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*Source: http://www.nationalpartnership.org/research-library/workplace-fairness/fair-pay/4-2017-co-wage-gap.pdf