Today is Equal Pay Day, an opportunity to raise awareness of the gender pay gap. This gap affects women in every single state in nearly every occupation; there’s no escaping it. And if you’re a woman of color, you’re even worse off.
This week, President Obama is planning two executive actions to promote equal pay for women: an executive order that will prohibit federal contractors from retaliating against employees who talk about how much money they make, and a presidential memorandum that will require contractors to report data disaggregated by sex and race showing the compensation they provide their employees.
Join me in a slow clap, won’t you?
Women, their families and their communities are searching for a strong political will to help eliminate pay inequity. It may be 2014, but many of our elected officials (the president notwithstanding) and political power players are stuck in the 1950s, either dismissing or bemoaning our demands for fair pay. And — gasp! — they aren’t all men.
Here are the top 3 most ridiculous things female GOP-ers have recently said about equal pay.
1. Women are too busy to want equal pay.
RedState Women Executive Director Cari Christman said that the GOP does not support equal pay laws because “women want real-world solutions to this problem, not more rhetoric.” When asked to elaborate, she said,
We lead busy lives, whether working professionally, whether working from home, and times are extremely busy. It’s a busy cycle for women, and we’ve got a lot to juggle. So when we look at this issue we think, what’s practical? And we want more access to jobs. We want to be able to get a higher education degree at the same time we’re working or raising a family.
So we want education and jobs but not equal pay? I beg to differ. Someone needs to explain to me how it’s not practical to receive proper remuneration for work so that we can pursue higher education and raise families.
2. “Men Are Better Negotiators.”
At least that’s how Beth Cubriel, head of the Texas Republican Party, explains the pay gap’s existence. She thinks that instead of pursuing legal action for pay equity, women should simply become better negotiators. You have to hand it to her — she’s managed to apply classic victim-blaming rhetoric to the workplace, while simultaneously bolstering a gender stereotype.
3. Fair pay makes women look like “whiners.”
Minnesota State Rep. Andrea Kieffer recently balked at a set of bills that would promote greater economic equality, claiming they paint women as whiners: “We heard several bills last week about women’s issues, and I kept thinking to myself: ‘These bills are putting us backwards in time. We are losing the respect that we so dearly want in the workplace by bringing up all these special bills for women, and almost making us look like whiners.”
Newsflash: we wouldn’t need these “special bills” if we were treated as equals from the get-go.
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Categories: Money
Is This The Way to Equal Representation in Business? 
Thank You, Sarah Silverman 
I Fund Abortions, and YOU CAN TOO 
Is This The Type of Equal Pay Progress You Expected? 
sherights.com 
The problem I have here is the link you provided to cite your argument that women are paid less than men. The problem is it just compares men and women overall. It doesn’t compare people in the exact same positions. This of course makes it look sexist because female-dominated fields (teaching, nursing, etc.) pay less than male-dominated fields (engineering, construction, etc.). All it’s proved is women tend to take lower paying jobs. If you were to compare women and men in the same fields and these same numbers came up, then you’d have an argument. But trying to fuel some campaign by saying ‘women are paid less than men because men are sexist’ is just wrong.
http://reason.com/blog/2014/04/08/white-house-wage-gender-gap-statistics
Also, as this link explains, when the same argument is presented to the White House, they say ‘oh, no, women are paid the same as men in equal positions here in the White House’. It’s just hilarious that they can figure out the obvious when protecting themselves, yet they’re unable to realize that could be the same explanation for the ‘gender wage gap’ for the rest of America.
I don’t know if these women are saying these things to garner favor from the Tea Party base or if they really believe it sad. While I am a far left progressive The White House and Democratic Congress should have gotten this done in ’09 and ’10, plus White House needs to fix reality that some of it’s female employees don’t receive pay equity! Thanks for listening. http://www.ericbrewton.com