Amid ongoing concerns that missing Black women and girls are too-often ignored by law enforcement and the media, a California legislator has proposed alert notifications to mandate immediate action when those cases happen.

Assembly Bill 2826 would apply to all retail department stores with 500 or more employees. The bill would do away with so-called “boys aisles” and “girls aisles,” by requiring that children’s products be offered in a single, gender neutral section.

The plaintiff is one of seven men who sit on the board of directors for Hawthorne-based OSI Inc., a manufacturer of security and health care systems. "The Woman Quota imposes a sex-based quota directly on shareholders, and seeks to force shareholders to perpetuate sex-based discrimination,” the complaint said.

After signing up for a class at the UC Davis Meat Laboratory as a freshman solely in order to satisfy a course requirement, Cindy Marlene Garcia found her calling. She now has begun competing in international butchering contests and will be the first woman on the U.S. team going for the gold in the World Butchers’ Challenge, otherwise known as the “Olympics of Meat.”

Hughes, an Oroville teacher, faced a male primary opponent who made a crass appeal to gender stereotypes. “It takes a virile man,” he insisted, to do the tough work required of lawmakers. “It’s no ‘pink tea’ job.” Hughes fired back: “Are the brace of Red Cross nurses, working night and day at the front [during World War I], caring for the wounded, serving in ‘pink tea’ jobs?”

In a list of 20 actions ranging from groping to light-hearted flirting, men in all cases but one were less likely than women to rate a specific act as sexual harassment. The exception – light-hearted flirting – was considered sexual harassment by 12 percent of both men and women. In all other cases, however, women were 10 to 20 percent more likely to rate an action as sexual harassment than men.

“It takes an incredibly strong person to come forward, period,” Reign said. “But women of color have a disincentive to come forward because they don’t have the same support system that white women have, and it has a chilling effect.”

Sixty-four percent of Californians canvassed in a statewide survey commissioned by the Blue Shield of California Foundation said women still haven’t achieved full equality in work, life and politics.