Committee
Rosalind Cook – Chair — Womens.Issues@lwvofla.org
The Chair of the Women’s Issues Committee monitors the status of women in Louisiana on a range of issues, including by not limited to: (1) women’s rights, including personal, domestic, and education and workplace safety (2) economic rights, including economic justice and security, equal pay for women and elimination of the gender pay gap, raising the minimum wage, paid sick and family leave, and affordable quality childcare, (3) sexual assault, including prevention abuse against women and better addressing domestic and campus violence, (4)
family security, including support for specific local, state and federal legislation to improve and protect the interests of women and their families, and (4) sexual and reproductive health, including comprehensive sexual health education, access to contraception and abortion to the extent permitted under state law, and maternal mortality and pregnancy outcomes, particularly as the last may affect women of color in the state. The Women’s Issues Committee represents LWVLA in meetings and conferences of the Legislative Agenda for Women (LAW), the Louisiana Center for Health Equity other organizations and coalitions that promote women’s issues in Louisiana.
League in Focus
“Despite existing data on women’s health outcomes, getting an office established in the first place was not an easy task, said Rosalind Cook, president of the New Orleans League of Women Voters, one of the effort’s earliest supporters.
“We would meet with legislators who didn’t even think there were any disparities in health care,” Cook said. But after years of lobbying legislators — and quite a few concessions — they finally saw success.”
The article by Alena Maschke was originally published in The Current Lafayette and can be read here.
