By Anna Daniels
Republicans have been having a hard time stringing words together when it comes to explaining why they don't support pay equity for women. It's a straightforward concept--equal pay for equal work. Yet it takes women until April 8 to catch up with men's earnings from the previous year. The median earnings for a woman working a full time job is about 77% of a man's. That figure drops for women of color and it hasn't budged in more than a decade.
President Obama's first action upon assuming office in 2009 was to sign the Lily Ledbetter Fair Wage Act. This act restored protection against wage discrimination that was stripped away by the Supreme Court's decision in Ledbetter v Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. The act extended the period of time for employees to file claims for wages lost because of discrimination. Yet wage discrimination on the basis of gender continues to exist.
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