Women's Rights

Women’s rights

  • In response to the USA Gymnastics sex abuse scandal, Senator Feinstein in March 2017 introduced legislation requiring amateur athletics governing bodies to report sex-abuse allegations to law enforcement or a child-welfare agency within 24 hours. The bill was signed into law on February 14, 2018.
  • Senator Feinstein introduced a resolution to recognize February 7th, 2018 as National Girls and Women in Sports Day, which passed the Senate unanimously.
  • Senator Feinstein introduced a resolution with Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (S.Res.323) to mandate sexual harassment prevention training for Members, officers, employees, and interns of the Senate. She was an original cosponsor on a similar bipartisan resolution (S.Res.330) introduced soon after that passed the Senate unanimously. (2017)
  • Senator Feinstein is an original cosponsor of the Congressional Harassment Reform Act of 2017 (S. 2236), a bipartisan bill that requires anti-harassment training for all congressional members, officers and employees and reforms how Congress handles harassment and discrimination claims.
  • Senator Feinstein is an original co-sponsor of the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Harassment Act of 2017 (S. 2203), a bill to ensure that employers cannot force their employees to submit to private arbitration of sex discrimination claims and waive any rights they would otherwise have under the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
  • Senator Feinstein led a letter in December 2017 to the Director of National Intelligence to review treatment of women employees in national security positions. 
  • Senator Feinstein joined other women senators in calling on the EEOC (which enforces federal workplace anti-discrimination laws and investigates discrimination charges) to address sexual harassment in the food and hospitality industries. 
  • Senator Feinstein is a longtime supporter of the Violence Against Women Act, known as VAWA, which became law in 1994, and was reauthorized and expanded upon in 2000, 2005, and 2013.
  • Senator Feinstein has consistently supported resolutions to revive consideration of the Equal Rights Amendment. (1993-2017)
  • Senator Feinstein introduced a resolution designating March 2016 as National Women’s History Month and recognizing the many notable contributions that women have made to the United States. (2016)
  • Senator Feinstein joined a congressional amicus brief in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstadt opposing the undue burden that Texas law had placed on women’s access to abortion. (2016)
  • Senator Feinstein voted for the Paycheck Fairness Act (first voted for cloture on June 4, 2012, then again as an amendment on March 24, 2015 – both failed). This bill would have strengthened the standards of the Equal Pay Act to better help employees who take action against workplace wage discrimination on the basis of gender. (2012, 2015)
  • Senator Feinstein voted for the Lilly Ledbetter Act, which was signed into law. This bill amended the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to state that an unlawful employment practice occurs when a discriminatory compensation practice is adopted and amended the statute of limitations for filing an equal-pay lawsuit. (2009)
  • Introduced the Harassment-Free Workplace Act to strengthen workplace protections. The bill would have expanded sexual harassment protections to employees of small businesses, making it an unlawful employment practice for a respondent to engage in a practice that constitutes sexual harassment as defined under the Civil Rights Act of 1964 against an employee or job applicant, and prohibited any action against an employee or applicant in response to a charge or allegation of sexual harassment or participation in an investigation. (1994)