President Urges Senate to Support Paycheck Fairness Act

On Tuesday July 20, 2010, President Barack Obama expressed his support for the Paycheck Fairness Act and urged the US Senate to pass the bill, which the House has already approved. In his written statement, the President noted:

In America today, women make up half of the workforce, and two-thirds of American families with children rely on a woman's wages as a significant portion of their families' income.

Yet, even in 2010, women make only 77 cents for every dollar that men earn. The gap is even more significant for working women of color, and it affects women across all education levels.... Paycheck discrimination hurts families who lose out on badly needed income. And with so many families depending on women's wages, it hurts the American economy as a whole. In difficult economic times like these, we simply cannot afford this discriminatory burden.

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We cannot do this work alone. So today, I thank the House for its work on this issue and encourage the Senate to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act, a common-sense bill that will help ensure that men and women who do equal work receive the equal pay that they and their families deserve. Passing this bill is one of the Task Force's key recommendations, and I hope Congress will act swiftly so that I can sign it into law.

Let's hope the President is successful in encouraging the passage of legislation that helps bring pay equality to all. It has been a long fight for this bill. We reported on its House sponsor Representative Rosa DeLauro [D-CT] (August 2008), and (June 2010), and on Ms. Foundation grantee the National Women's Law Center's fight for it in May 2010. For more on the NWLC's advocacy on fair pay, see its Womenstake.org blog.