By normalizing the images of working pregnant women, we can perhaps get to the thornier issue of why so many women still fear and face workplace discrimination. If we want to truly give women equal footing in the workplace, we need to address what is a vulnerable time for so many women and the ramifications that often last long after the baby is born.

The rise of women-focused organizations promoting co-working, workplace savviness, and old-fashioned networking is confronting a new backlash: lawsuits from men who say they are being unfairly excluded.

“States are laboratories for invention,” said Wendy Chun-Hoon, co-director of Family Values @ Work, an organization working with paid family leave coalitions at the state level. “States are paving the way to eventual federal policy,” she said, and because states have over a decade of lessons to learn from (California’s paid family leave policy was implemented in 2004, followed by New Jersey in 2009), they also know what mistakes and pitfalls to avoid.

A new poll out from Small Business Majority surveyed more than 500 female entrepreneurs and found that more than half of the women (56 percent) say that access to birth control and the ability to decide if and when to have children allowed them to advance in their careers and start their businesses.

Winter explained that Amazon wanted to reshape the employee experience, including for those who are not parents. “We want to attract great talent and we want to be relevant to the market so we don’t lose talent. This was something we wanted to do for employees, but [improved family leave] pays off in many ways, retention being a key one.”