Another study conducted by the National Partnership for Women and Families found that the median yearly pay for women employed full time is $11.084 less than men’s.

“Prior to the ACA, individual plans or small group plans would do gender rating, where they would charge a higher rate for women than men for the same insurance plan,” says Lauren Birchfield Kennedy, senior health policy counsel at the National Partnership for Women and Families. “If you were a small business that employed a majority of women, you paid a higher rate. But now you can no longer rate a plan based on gender.”

Paid family leave refers to policies that allow workers to take time off from work to recover from illness, to care for a seriously ill family member or to bond with a newly born or adopted child.

Twenty years after Congress enacted the Family and Medical Leave Act, the law continues to evolve.

Debra Ness of the National Partnership for Women and Families… called them “a tremendous victory for home care workers, fair pay, quality care and the well-being of our nation. The home care workforce has been grossly undervalued for much too long…Nearly half of home care workers rely on public assistance to make ends meet because of poverty-level wages and few benefits. These regulations will help change this grave injustice and improve working conditions.”

Right now, such benefits are still purely dependent on where you work. I can tell you about 100 employers that are committed to supporting new working parents, but for too many employees, the juggle is still a struggle. That’s why we joined with the National Partnership for Women and Families to demand a federal mandate for paid family leave.

“The ability to decide when and how we have children is critical to our economic well-being,” said Judy Lichtman of the National Partnership for Women and Families.

Women are paid less than men—on average, 77 cents on the male dollar, according, most recently, to a 2013 report from the National Partnership for Women & Families.

Board members, who often hire chief executives, need to do a better job of making sure women are not shortchanged, says Judith Lichtman, senior adviser to the Partnership for Women and Families.

“It’s past time we update our standards to reflect the realities of the way we work and live in the 21st century,” said Vicki Shabo, director of work and family programs for the National Partnership for Women and Families.

Katherine also told me about legislation that’s been drafted by the National Partnership for Women and Families that would give workers up to 12 weeks of paid leave at very little cost to workers or employers.