In all of our lives, many of the most important people are women. For me, it is my wife Alex, my Mom Maggie, and my sisters Jackie and Dianne. That is why I am proud to have co-sponsored several bills that Governor Rell signed into law this year that advance the cause of women’s rights in the workplace and healthcare. We have made huge strides in the last fifty years towards ensuring equality for men and women, but there are still areas where we must continue to make progress.
First is ensuring equal pay for equal work. In my workplace (and probably in yours) this is not an issue—men and women with the same skill sets, performance, and responsibilities get paid the same. However, I learned there are still a few employers out there who discriminate pay based on gender. Therefore I was proud to co-sponsor a new law that strengthens our gender non-discrimination statutes.
While current law already prohibits gender-based pay discrimination, our new law extends the time for filing a complaint from one to two years and bolsters the whistleblower protections for employees involved in such cases. Also, the new law now allows a judge to add punitive damages in addition to back pay when a company is found guilty of discrimination. At the same time, the law seeks to protect companies from unfounded or frivolous accusations by expanding possible employer defenses for legitimate reasons for pay differential (e.g., seniority systems, education, training, or experience).
Secondly, I co-sponsored a bill to prohibit the use of ultrasound equipment for commercial photography. In the past year, a few companies have opened in Connecticut that use second-hand ultrasound equipment to take dozens of “vanity” pictures of fetuses as they grow over the nine months of pregnancy. While it is completely safe to get pictures of your developing baby from your doctor 3-4 times through the pregnancy, the taking of dozens of ultrasound pictures outside of a medical facility poses a potential health risk to the baby. We have prohibited companies selling these pictures because there is a proven health risk to overexposure to ultrasound (but you can of course still get the pictures from your doctor).
Finally, I am hoping to get my proposal for a new Sexual Assault Forensic Examiner (SAFE) program passed in this year’s budget. All too often when women are raped, trials force traumatized women to relive the horror of their experience through taking the stand against the accused rapist. The SAFE program would provide for forensic examiners to gather medical evidence immediately after a rape occurs, to provide more conclusive medical proof that a rape did or did not occur. The forensic examiner would be able to testify at the trial as to the facts, rather than relying only on the victim to relive every detail of the crime. Rapists need to be put in jail for life with possibility of parole, and my hope is that the SAFE program will result in more justice for the women who have suffered this unspeakable crime.
Protecting women’s health and ensuring equality in the workplace are ideals that all of us share. For me, these laws are more than just abstract ideas—they protect Alex, Mom, Jackie, Dianne, and all the women in my life. I will continue to work for the advancement of women’s issues in the legislature, because ultimately they benefit all of us.
Dan Debicella is the State Senator representing Stratford, Shelton, Monroe, and Seymour. If you have feedback for him or want to talk about the issues, he can be reached at (860) 240-8875 or by e-mail at dan.debicella@cga.ct.gov. |
