The National Women’s Law Center, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the National Partnership for Women & Families joined in one brief, while SEIU Healthcare Pennsylvania filed a second one. Both filings contend that UPMC’s arguments aim to scuttle affirmative action protections that have governed federal contractors for decades.

Ten cities and states have passed laws guaranteeing access to some kind of family leave this year, according to the National Partnership for Women and Families. NPR’s Jennifer Ludden speaks with director Vicki Shabo about efforts to make family leave mandatory.

MLA was intended to be a “first step on the road to a family-friendly nation,” Debra Nass of the National Partnership for Women and Families, which helped draft FMLA, said. Yet in 20 years, there has been virtually no expansion.

“We’re in a very different place. We’re in a cultural moment where the democratic forces, the political forces and the economic forces are all pointed to address the very real need of keeping people in the workforce and addressing the changing family needs of child care and elder care,” said Vicki Shabo, director of work and family programs.

The National Partnership spearheaded efforts to pass the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 and now leads a large coalition supporting Gillibrand’s bill.

And hooray for that, because according to the National Partnership for Women and Families, when men are able to take paternity leave they are more involved in their children’s care and more committed throughout the child’s life.

“Being a truly family friendly legislator means advancing proposals like the FAMILY Act that will help women, their families and our country.”

The FAMILY Act is backed by groups such as the Center for American Progress, which proposed a similar measure in 2009, and the National Partnership for Women and Families, which wrote and helped pass the FMLA.

According to the National Partnership for Women & Families , a mere 11 of the U.S. work force has paid family leave through their employer, and fewer than 40 percent have access to personal medical leave through an employer-provided temporary insurance program.

Vicki Shabo joins to discuss the importance of the recently-proposed Family and Medical Insurance Leave Act to millions of Americans.

So says a new study brief from the Movement Advancement Project, the Center for American Progress and by the Human Rights Campaign (in partnership with A Better Balance, Family Values at Work and the National Partnership for Women & Families). It’s called An Impossible Choice: LGBT Workers and Family Leave Laws.

“This law will make our culture in general more accepting of workers who have work-family demands,” Ms. Shabo said, “in the same way that the Family Medical Leave Act changed culture around caregiving and normalized unpaid time off.”

Those numbers persist despite the fact that there 37,454 households in Montana are headed by women, according to the National Partnership for Women and Families.