Paid family leave - finally!

Yesterday Washington state Gov. Christine Gregoire signed a family leave bill that would give workers a paid stipend for five weeks to care for a child.

Washington is the second state after California to offer paid family leave, which must be taken concurrently with unpaid federal leave.

Thanks is owed to Sen. Karen Keiser of Kent for sponsoring the bill, and to MomsRising.org for advocating on its behalf.

And in case you missed it, the cover story of ParentMap this month is about mothers' rights and includes some disturbing statistics:

• The U.S. is one of only five countries out of 173 studied that doesn't have some form of paid leave for new mothers. The other four: Swaziland, Lesotho, Liberia, and Papua New Guinea.
• Non-mothers earn 10 percent less than their male counterparts. Mothers earn 27 percent less than men, and single mothers as much as 44 percent less.
• Mothers were 44 percent less likely to be hired than non-mothers for the same job -- even with the exact same qualifications.
  

-- Source: ParentMap; MomsRising.org

It looks like we still have some work to do.