This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2017, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Capt. Barton Blair, who is in charge of security at the Utah Capitol, said he's never seen anything like it, and in my 15 years covering the Legislature, neither have I.
On Monday afternoon, 6,000 people, mostly women carrying signs and wearing the ubiquitous pink knit hats, descended on the opening day of the Legislature to deliver a message that these women are ready to defend the progress their mothers and grandmothers fought for.
"I think things have to hit rock bottom for people to stand up, and I can't imagine it more rocky or more further down than now," Sanam Lalani told me after Monday's rally.
While there is an understandable fear presented by President Donald Trump and his administration, the status of women in the state was already particularly bleak, among the worst in the country in several areas.
Women who work full time make 70 cents for every dollar that men working full time earn. Yes, there are cultural and social factors at play, where women often go into fields that pay less. But the state should be able to do better than 48th in the country in this metric.
Just 18 percent of the top business executives in the state are female, and the top female executives make more than $50,000 less than their male counterparts; for every large company owned by a woman, there are 10 owned by men.
In conservative circles at the Capitol, discussion of so-called women's issues can bog down in debate over abortion, reproductive rights and birth control — areas where Utah's male Republican majorities are focused on ratcheting up restrictions.
But there are some simple advances that could help close the workplace divide.
For the past two years, Rep. Angela Romero, D-Salt Lake City, sponsored legislation to give state workers — men and women — six weeks of paid parental leave when they have a child or adopt.
In a state that touts itself as being pro-family, it seems like a no-brainer. Can we legitimately argue it is a bad thing for new parents to be able to spend time with their new children? Studies show the parental-leave benefits both the parents and the child and helps retain employees.
Romero's bill didn't make it out of committee last year, amid concerns over lost worker productivity and the potential cost to the state, but it will be back this year.
Earlier this month, Salt Lake City Mayor Jackie Biskupski extended paid parental leave to city workers, citing how important it was for her to spend time with her son, Archie, when she adopted him seven years ago.
At the federal level, Trump himself has called to extend paid leave to mothers of newborns.
Yeah, really. That Donald Trump.
If Utah takes this small step forward, it helps women remain in the workforce after they have children.
There's an interesting phenomenon in the state, where young women are actually more likely to be in the workforce than their sisters across the country until they reach the age of 22. But then the percentage of women in the workforce drops significantly and doesn't catch up again until the age of 45.
Adding state tax deductions for child-care expenses and expanding the earned income tax credit for low-income working mothers could also go a long way to helping working women close the gap and improve their quality of life.
Romero also has legislation seeking to require police departments to test every rape kit in every case, building on recent attempts to chip away at a backlog in kits that have been gathering dust. Again, it seems like a no-brainer, but the challenge will be coming up with the funding for the tests.
There will be harder battles — resisting efforts to further tighten Utah's abortion laws and the perennial fights over access to birth control, for example. But if these women stay engaged in the fight, as they were challenged to do Monday, 2017 could see real, tangible, bipartisan progress in a policy area that is often overlooked.
Asked about the march and the concerns of the thousands who attended, Utah's all-male Republican legislative leaders reach back more than 140 years, noting that Utahn Seraph Young was the first woman in the United States to legally vote. And that Utah was the first to elect a woman, Martha Hughes Cannon, to be a state senator.
And how far have we come since?
Today women, half the state's population, hold roughly 1 in 7 legislative seats, one of the worst ratios in the country.
Which raises one more important form of activism — one Young would fully support but one less than 47 percent of Utah women do, again among the lowest in the nation: voting.