(NNPA)—Could you use an additional $24,000 in your yearly wages? How about nearly $19,000? Or even just another $11,000 to $12,000?
Those figures are what you get—or rather, what women who work full-time don’t get because of the pervasive “wage gap” between women and men. Correcting that injustice is one reason President Obama last week issued an executive order and a presidential memorandum meant to ensure that contractors for the federal government follow equal-pay provisions.
True, election-year politics also played their part in the action: One purpose it served was to underscore the opposition of the Republicans in Congress to another proposed federal act—here, the Paycheck Fairness Act—aimed at advancing the rights of women.
That’s an important electoral “talking point” both parties are grappling with as the Democrats try to offset a widely-expected GOP surge in November that may win them control of the Senate and leave the president facing an implacably hostile Republican majority in both chambers of Congress his last two years in office.
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