The Senate will soon be voting on what should be an uncontroversial bill: the Paycheck Fairness Act. The Act would expand and strengthen the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and the Fair Labor Standards Act, in order to address the, yes, still very real pay gap that exists in almost every single profession.
This is one of those no-brainer bills that should fly right through Congress with unanimous bipartisan support. But since Republicans hate women'and fairness'they've previously blocked the bill in Congress and are giving every indication that they'll do so again. Because even though Republicans are desperately trying to prove they don't hate women, and even though Mitt Romney has said he thinks equal pay is just dandy, the reality is that Republicans quite like the way things are, thank you very much. And they don't see any reason why we should bother to address the pay gap, or enforce equal pay laws, because that's not fair to employers who currently enjoy exploiting the reduced price of women's labor.
Cue Dana Perino, former mouthpiece for George W. Bush and now a Fox "News" bobblehead, perfectly articulating the Republican Party's dismissal of the silly little notion of equal pay:
Well that it's just yet another distraction of dealing with the bigger, major financial issues that this country should try to be dealing with. This is not a job creator. This will actually'there is an argument that it could actually hurt women.Oh, sure. Equal pay will hurt women because, um, stuff. But that's not all dim bulb Dana has to say:
I'm for equal pay for women for doing the work that they do.No, Dana. If you do not support laws to require and enforce equal pay, then actually, you're not really "for equal pay for women." You're "for employers being able to pay women whatever the heck they feel like paying, even if it's less than what they pay male employees." It's a subtle distinction, I know, but try to keep up. Or offer up meaningless anecdotes from the morning paper. Whichever:
Interesting story in The Wall Street Journal today that there is an amazing crop of women right now that are on the verge of becoming CEO in the next five to ten years.Oh, yes, that is interesting. You know what's even more interesting, Dana? That "amazing crop of women" who are just a hop, skip, and a decade away from becoming CEOs are going to get screwed more than women in any other profession:
The Institute for Women's Policy Research took a look at pay for the most common men's professions, and the biggest gap came in the very area that's supposedly the most meritocratic job title in the country: CEO.Oops.
Now, we know that Dana Perino isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer, since she thinks there's no reason to know anything about world events that happened before she was born'and the Equal Pay Act was signed into law before she was born'but this concept is so simple, even she should be able to wrap her little mind around it. If you believe that women deserve equal pay for equal work, then you must support laws to enforce equal pay because employers aren't going to voluntarily do it. If they did, the pay gap wouldn't exist.
Now, Dana, if that's still too complicated for you to understand, maybe you should go home and ask your husband about it. Perhaps he can explain it to you.
This week's good, bad and ugly below the fold.
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