WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama signed an equal-pay bill into law Thursday before cheering labor and women leaders who fought hard for it and the woman whose history-making lawsuit gave impetus to the cause.
Obama, choosing the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act as the first bill to sign as president, called it a “wonderful day” and declared that ending pay disparities between men and woman an issue not just for women, but for all workers.
Darn skippy.
GOP fails to revive abortion-group funding ban
WASHINGTON – Senate Republicans have failed to revive a prohibition on using federal funding for international groups that perform abortions or provide abortion information.
By a 60-37 vote, Democrats turned back an amendment that would have denied aid to groups that may be involved in abortion but also work on other health care issues abroad.
The amendment was offered by Republicans during debate of legislation to expand the government-backed health insurance program for lower-income children.
Stay strong, my brothers and sisters!
It gets better.
Nice!!
“Obama, choosing the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act as the first bill to sign as president, called it a “wonderful day” and declared that ending pay disparities between men and woman an issue not just for women, but for all workers.”
Being President: ur doin it rite.
Yay! I work in a union, so I’ve experienced the joys of equal pay for a few years now but it’s still awesome news. However, I just want to point out that before I worked in a union I took traditional male jobs so I could make ends meet (roofer, cook) because jobs that women tradionally do (child care, hair styling ect) are still lower paying feilds of work. I think sociological images blogged about this a few months ago (http://contexts.org/socimages/ sorry, I can’t find the exact blog but if you find it will blow you away, it’s very interesting). Its great that a female working the same job can make equal pay to that as a man but their are still problems within traditional fields of work, jobs that are just as important but because of tradional gender rolls, don’t make decent wages.
I think you make a good point Atalised. I don’t think anyone here thinks the fight for pay equity and gender parity is over. Just that this Act is one more large step towards parity.
Teachers, editors, child care workers, social workers, hair stylists, nurses are all traditionally woman-dominated fields that underpay relative to the degrees of responsibility and education needed to perform the job. (I know there are other fields, but these are decent examples). The difficulty comes in convincing employers and/or clients to pay more, especially in services that aren’t easily unionized, such as hairstyling or child-care, where frequently workers are self employed.