On Equal Pay Day, Congressman Dan Kildee and Senator Gary Peters are standing with women, who still earn an average of 78 cents on the dollar compared to men. Imagine if your year was more than 15 months long. Sounds exhausting, doesn’t it? Well, that’s the reality for too many American women who still do not earn the same salary […]

Terri Lynn “mom with two kids” Land, the Michigan Embarrassment™, has taken on a new role: blackmailer. And the Detroit Free Press is having none of it: [Terri Lynn Land’s] GOP Senate candidate’s campaign is refusing to attend an endorsement meeting with the Free Press editorial board unless the newspaper changes an Oct 4. op-ed by columnist Brian Dickerson, which […]

Refusing to debate fair pay is one more way Republicans are trying to marginalize women — and their votes. It should come as no surprise that Senate Republicans have blocked the Paycheck Fairness Act for the third time. On Wednesday — the day after Equal Pay Day — they blocked a vote to simply open debate on the bill. Republicans […]

Sometimes it’s hard to believe it’s 2013…

The button shown above is the actual one that was worn by my mother when she marched, with me at her side, with 85,000 others in Chicago, during a rally for the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) in 1980. 59¢ was how much women in 1980 earned for every dollar a man made for the same job.

Today that number is 77¢. In 33 years, women have only gained 18¢ in their struggle for paycheck fairness. At that rate, to paraphrase Laurie Anderson, it will be the year 2055 before they make a buck. That is, unless Maryland Senator Barbara Mikulski and Connecticut Congresswoman Rose DeLauro have anything to say about it.

Much, much more after the jump.

The other day, I blogged about President Obama coming out in firm and vocal support for the Paycheck Fairness Act. I told the story of my mother wearing a button with “59¢” on it, representing the amount of money a woman earned over thirty years ago for every dollar a man made to do the same job. Today, as I […]

When I was a kid, my mom was an ardent feminist and fought hard for women’s rights. We attended rallies, she lobbied her members of Congress, and she was vocally outspoken about it. One of the buttons she wore on her purse was a simple forest green button with a simple white “59¢” it. The “59¢” represented the amount of […]