“The top reason why people don’t use the FMLA when they need it is because they can’t afford an unpaid leave,” says Vicki Shabo, vice president of National Partnership for Women and Families. Meanwhile, workers have even more limited access to the unicorn of work-family accommodations, paid family leave. According to National Partnership, “Only 13 percent of workers in the United States have access to paid family leave through their employers.”

“We’ve seen incredible momentum on the issue of paid leave,” said Vicki Shabo, vice president of the National Partnership for Women & Families, a District-based nonprofit. “Private sector companies are adopting new policies, and although two weeks falls way short of what working parents need, it’s a great start.”

More than 43 million Americans don’t have paid sick time, according to the National Partnership for Women and Families.

This NPR interview features National Partnership Vice President Vicki Shabo.

Individual families sharing their stories is the most important part of all of this—more important, even, than these companies’ policies. It’s these stories that are going to make a difference. You can start by sharing your story here with the National Partnership for Women & Families, a nonprofit fighting to make paid family and medical leave available for all working families.

In fact, employees have no legal requirement to tell their boss that they’re pregnant at all – although their changing bodies might eventually betray the news, says Sarah Fleisch Fink, senior policy counsel for workplace programs at the National Partnership for Women & Families, a nonprofit, nonpartisan activist group.

According to a 2008 survey by the National Partnership for Women & Families, only 16 percent do — which just goes to show we’ve got a lot of work to do.

The F.M.L.A. was introduced in Congress, in some version, regularly between 1984 and 1993, according to an advocacy group that worked closely on the bill, only to be felled by two vetoes by President George H.

According to the National Partnership for Women and Families, black and Hispanic women are paid 60¢ and 55¢, respectively, for every dollar paid to a white (non-Hispanic) man.

“I think it’s very commendable that he’s talking about and recognizing that he needs to spend time with his children,” said Vicki Shabo, vice president of the National Partnership for Women and Families. “Maybe that’s a welcome step towards having a broad national conversation that we need about the policies that all working families need.”

“This past year, in part because of heightened momentum and the emphasis that Obama has put on paid leave, we’ve seen 17 states propose legislation based on this issue,” says Vicki Shabo, vice president at the National Partnership for Women & Families.

Since FMLA’s inception in 1993, American men and women have used it more than 200 million times, the National Partnership for Women & Families estimates.