The San Francisco Women’s Political Committee’s mission is to endorse, empower, and elect people as candidates for local office who self-identify as women, non-binary, or transgender and those who share our values. To uphold this mission we examine state and local level legislation relevant to our vision and move to support, oppose, or track it.
In the current executive administration, we have seen and continue to anticipate legislation and rulings that challenge the rights of marginalized people and specifically target women. As a part of a broader “federal fightback” effort we’re seeing an uptick in proposals that protect the state from enforcing policies being rolled out at the national level.
Our policy agenda for 2025 sets out four of our broadest level interests in the wellbeing of women to guide what legislation we choose to engage with at the state and local level. These policy priorities are:
- Advance policies that achieve gender parity in political representation
- Ensure that San Francisco and California protect residents from harmful conservative national policies
- Support local and state policies that seek to address gender-based violence
- Support local and state policies that seek to improve the livelihood, wellbeing, and equal access to economic mobility of women, girls, transgender, and nonbinary individuals
While SFWPC prioritizes local and state policy advocacy over the federal, we continue to focus energy on member education, community organizing, and monitoring policy developments at the federal level related to these prioritized areas:
- US-based reproductive justice & health care access of women’s health care: medication abortion access, abortion clinic access, Medicaid, Title X family planning
- Education access: Title IX protections, threat/withdrawal of federal funds from academic institutions without cause, student loan availability
- LGBTQ+ Rights: erasure of trans identity, threats to gender affirming care, gay marriage
- Immigration: increased aggression in detention and deportation protocols, establishment of detention centers in California, family separation, undermining legal representation/legal proceedings
- Voting rights: SAVE Act, federal efforts to interfere in state voting processes
What legislation has been tracked so far?
In March, the SFWPC board supported SF Ordinance BOS 250239 to bring the SF Board of Supervisors up to speed with a modern parental leave policy and voted to track and monitor SB 464, a bill introduced by State Senator Smallwood-Cuevas that increased the scope of employers that need to report their compensation data.
In February, we moved to support SB 257 – The Pregnancy As a Recognized Event for Nondiscriminatory Treatment (PARENT), which seeks to amend existing health care coverage laws to recognize pregnancy as a qualifying event for enrolling in or changing health benefit plans.
In January, we stood by trans women by opposing AB-89, a bill that sought to exclude transgender & non-binary students from participating on girls’ sports teams. We also voted to support SB-59 (the Transgender Privacy Act) to seal court records related to a person’s gender transition.
How to propose a policy position & stay in touch
Our policy committee meets on the third Thursday of every month from 6pm to 8pm. At these meetings members evaluate policy proposals and submit recommendations to the SFWPC Board to Support/Oppose/Track the policy.
To submit a policy position proposal please fill out this form by the Monday of the week before the Policy Committee meeting, if you’d like it to be considered at that meeting. For example, if the meeting is on Thursday, April 17th, the submission deadline would be Monday, April 7th.
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