Bill Text: CA SB1356 | 2023-2024 | Regular Session | Amended
Bill Title: Judiciary: training: gender bias.
Spectrum: Partisan Bill (Democrat 8-0)
Status: (Passed) 2024-08-19 - Chaptered by Secretary of State. Chapter 187, Statutes of 2024. [SB1356 Detail]
Download: California-2023-SB1356-Amended.html
Amended
IN
Senate
April 10, 2024 |
Amended
IN
Senate
April 03, 2024 |
Introduced by Senator Wahab |
February 16, 2024 |
LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL'S DIGEST
Digest Key
Vote: MAJORITY Appropriation: NO Fiscal Committee: YES Local Program: NOBill Text
The people of the State of California do enact as follows:
SECTION 1.
The Legislature finds and declares the following:(d)Of the 10 countries in the world with the highest rates of female incarcerations, the United States is in first place.
(e)While California is one of the few places in the United States where the number of people incarcerated in women’s prisons is significantly decreasing, in women’s prisons Black women are 25 percent of the prison population, even though Black people make up only 6.5 percent of California’s population.
(f)Forty-three percent of survey respondents at Central California Women’s Facility indicate intimate partner violence played a role in their criminalization or incarceration, with
several respondents noting the trauma of their own childhood abuse or witnessing abuse of their own children were factors.
(g)Women’s involvement in the commission of crimes is often due to factors related to limited economic mobility, a lack of educational opportunities, poverty, discrimination, violence, and drug use. However, available data indicates these circumstances are not given appropriate legal consideration when assessing the context of risk faced by women, resulting in women facing biased criminal proceedings and possibly long prison terms.
(h)Currently, only two countries across the Americas incorporate a gender perspective when evaluating the efficacy of their reentry programming.
(i)One of the most wide-known examples of employment discrimination that intersects with gender is the persistent wage
gap between men and women, where the median salary for women in 2022 was $52,360, while the median salary for men in 2022 was $62,350. An even deeper analysis reveals that the wage gap for Black, Latina, and Native American women is under $0.66 for every dollar that White, non-Hispanic men make.
(j)As of 2019, more women were earning college degrees than men, yet the wage gap has not substantively improved as a result.
(k)Analyses of the economic impacts of COVID-19 reveal disparate impacts along gender lines with women, with women 2.4 times more likely than men to report losing paid work due to caretaking expectations. This exacerbated already existing workplace related gender disparities.
(l)The United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) indicates that between 2018 and 2021, they received
27,291 charges alleging sexual harassment, noting an increase in the two years following the #MeToo movement of 2017. Women filed 78.2 percent of these charges, however more significantly, women filed 62.2 percent of the total harassment charges. The EEOC indicates that in 43.5 percent of the sexual harassment charges, a concurrent retaliation charge was filed.