On Wednesday evening, President Obama addressed a dinner hosted by the National Women's Law Center, and delivered a powerful speech on the importance of continuing the fight for equality for women and girls. The dinner honored women Freedom Riders, who put their own lives in jeopardy in order to fight for the end of segregation in the South.
It was an honor to spend an evening with these courageous women, and it was a moment when our nation's past and present were truly woven together. One Freedom Rider whispered to the President Obama that on the day he was born, August 4th, 1961, she was in jail in Mississippi.
The Freedom Riders' stories should remind us all that change is hard. Very hard. It takes time. But with conviction, determination, and sacrifice, change is always possible. And when it comes to securing equal rights and opportunities for America's women and girls, our country has made great progress in just a few short years.
Change is the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, the very first bill President Obama signed into law, which strengthens a woman's right to equal pay.
Change is health care reform that makes it illegal to deny coverage for women with pre-existing conditions such as breast cancer or being a victim of domestic violence, and requires insurance companies to cover preventive care, including mammograms and contraception.
Change is investing in STEM education for girls, so that America's women can be equally represented in the next generation of scientists, researchers, and engineers.
Change is nominating two women to the Supreme Court, so that for the first time in American history, three of the nine justices are women.
Change is creating the White House Council on Women and Girls, which focuses every federal department and agency on working together to improve the lives of women and girls, recognizing that the issues that primarily affect women are not just women's issues. When a woman is paid equally for equal work, her family is better off, her community is healthier, and our economy grows. When women succeed, America succeeds.
I could not be prouder to work on behalf of a leader who truly understands the importance of these issues. President Obama has worked tirelessly to make sure that women and girls live in a country where, as he put it, "there is no limit on how big they can dream or how high they can reach."
Yet, President Obama recognizes that we still have a long way to go. Women continue to trail men in science and math, subjects that will be absolutely critical for the jobs of the future. Women still earn only 77 cents for every dollar that men earn. And like every group of Americans, women have been hit hard by the economic crisis, and the recession that followed.
As President Obama pointed out, there are those in Congress who don't seem to understand the urgency of these challenges. Republicans in the Senate have blocked the American Jobs Act, which would cut taxes for nearly 80 million women. They voted down a measure that would have put hundreds of thousands teachers - about three-quarters of whom are women - back in front of the classroom, where they could help prepare our kids for the future.
The President will continue to urge Congress to put politics aside, and do the right thing for American families. And if Congress refuses to act, he will continue to take steps to improve the economy without them. Because if we harness the potential of every American, there is no question that we will out-compete the rest of the world for the jobs and industries of the future.
I was reminded of this a few weeks ago, when the winners of the Google Science Fair were announced. Over 10,000 young people submitted projects, from 90 different countries. In many ways, this competition was a metaphor for the global competition that will define the 21st century. Citizens and countries will compete for the jobs and industries of the future, and as they do, STEM skills will be absolutely critical. So President Obama was thrilled when he heard that this year's winners were three teenage girls from America.
After the announcement, President Obama invited all three girls to the White House, so he could personally congratulate them on their achievement. I had the chance to meet these young women, and they were extraordinary. Not only were they very smart, they were full of passion and enthusiasm about learning so that they could contribute to society.
As President Obama said on Wednesday, they demonstrate that America is still "a place where ideas are born, where dreams can grow, and where a student in a classroom or a passenger on a bus or a legal secretary in an office can stand up and decide to change the world."
Continuing our journey toward a more perfect union won't be easy. It never is. But as women throughout our country fight for change -- for equal rights and equal opportunity -- the White House will be a partner in their work.
Gail Vida Hamburg: Engineers Rule!
James M. Gentile: It's Time to STEM the Loss of Science and Engineering Students
Wendell Potter: A Determined Dog Goes After Insurers Again to Save Consumers Billions
While on the surface this seems to make sense, it assumes that all employers act based on the principle that they will hire whoever they can pay less money to. But this is not always true. If an employer is motivated by sexism (and isn't this part of the claim?) then he will pay the women less and still hire men.
This is another "statistic" the MRAs throw around. Where does it come from? In 2007, the GAO pegged the figure of female managers at 40%, with only 14% of those women being mothers with children under 18.
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-10-1064T
I know MRAs are creative at manufacturing the stats they're looking for, but since this is an increasingly popular one, I'd love to see where it originates. Are they counting night shift managers at McDonalds in that number? Where does it come from?
Chuckle. Not all of us are as obsessed with feminism as you. Never read that piece.
I disagree with almost all of that article's conclusions. It's very sloppily written and just recycles the usual nonsense that today's boys are somehow geneticallÂy damaged and can no longer learn in the exact kind of verbal, sit still, female teacher classrooms that boys have been learning in for over a hundred years.
HOwever, its comment that "more women are managers" is perhaps the most ignorant. If you follow the bouncing ball over to BLS, you see that this 51% figure comes from a grouping called "manageriaÂl, professionÂal and related professionÂs" which includes management occupationÂs, business and finance, computer & mathematicÂal professionÂs, community and social services,eÂducation, training & library jobs, arts, design and media, law and health care.
So you see - not the same thing as "more women are managers". It's always better to question such countierintuitive claims, rather than just ingest them because they're ideologically convenient.
I think that more mothers should be offended that the White House don't have a Office of Boys and Men.
1. It merely totes up any incident of physical altercation between a cohabitating couple. A slap gets exactly the same weight as a fatal gunshot, no more, no less.
2. It makes no distinction between offensive and defensive violence. A woman pushing a man off her gets exactly as much weight as a man knocking a woman to the ground.
3. It does not account for the vastly different amounts of injury and death that women sustain. That is irrelevant to this study, which is basically nothing but a list of physical interactions.
4. It completely disregards the period after a couple breaks up, or a woman leaves a man. Since this is when the majority of truly deadly violence happens to women, this is a glaring omissiion.
The study is meaningless, but you can expect to see it referenced ad nauseum by MRAs in these discussions.
The one other fact in this down turn is, if you want equality many woman will give up jobs so those unemployed is equal.
The only thing remotely in danger of making us "men lite" is allowing practices that punish us for being ourselves to persist. If I get paid less for the same work simply for being a woman while performing it then I am being told with crystal clarity that femininity is something to despise in myself.
Words are wind. Actions speak far louder.
Please ask President Obama to STOP the illegal reinstatement of FBI's Cointelpro program that harms so many innocent U.S. citizens esp Activists, Whistleblowers, Minorities and Single Women. When Obama signed to extend the Patriot Act, it allowed for this form of Organized Staking & Electronic Harassment to continue and this form of domestic terrorism and stalking is especially detrimental to Single Women given that military energy weapons are often used on such targeted victims....use your imagination to consider what these FBI agents and their informants are able to do to Single Women via military energy weapons and why is FBI using military weapons on U.S. citizens anyway? Shame on Obama Administration!
Society is based on the social contract and The Rule of Law which this administration has not evenly enforced against The TBTF Banks and Wall Street.
Regards,
Woman with big feet
I know he is speaking for all women, we know he is yet reading some paid post here they use all these sites to twist. spin and spread bs facts
Who this information IS NOT reaching are the ones without access to real information , in those red states, all they have is CON views.....that is sad
Did it ever show up when the repubs tried to pass the personhood bill
Thank goodness it got NATIONAL attention otherwise women in Mississippi would have voted against all women's best interests....low educated voters amass in the red states..PERIOD
That is such old news...try to keep up please
Watch at next election when women everywhere fight to get to polls on bus or running...
http://www.consad.com/content/reports/Gender%20Wage%20Gap%20Final%20Report.pdf
When I called and asked the B of L why they removed the report, they told me I needed to request that information through the Freedom of Information Act.