E&W Blog
They want women to sue the boss. We want women to be the boss.
WASHINGTON,
March 27, 2019
Remarks as delivered:
Thank you, Madam Chairman. I have worked for most of my life. I entered the workforce as a young woman not because I wanted to, but because I had to. I knew the burden of poverty well. If I didn’t work to support myself, if I didn’t contribute to my family income, we would go hungry. While I have been enormously blessed to have gone from working for survival to working for pleasure and, I hope, a greater purpose, I know there are millions of women of all ages in this country today who must work to survive, just as I did. When I entered the workforce, equal pay for equal work—equal pay for women—was a demand but not yet the law. Today, it is the law. The Equal Pay Act and the Civil Rights Act are clear that pay discrimination is wrong, it is unacceptable, and it is illegal. Managers who discriminate on the basis of sex are breaking at least two federal laws, and they have no excuses. No one should operate under the assumption that women have reached their full potential in the workplace. Over the years, I’ve experienced sexism and misogyny. I’ve seen unfairness. I’ve seen remarkable advancement, and I’ve remained disappointed in many ways. So for the sake of all the working women I’ve known and know now, women who work because they choose to and women who work because they must, I looked for anything in this legislation worthy of their support. I found that this bill wasn’t written for their sake at all. This bill is a cynical political ploy that borders on paternalism. There’s not a single new or strengthened legal protection against pay discrimination for working women in H.R. 7. This bill is entirely designed for trial lawyers, and Democrats must think women are too dumb to understand what they’ve done. It’s an insult to women everywhere that Democrats are passing this bill off as something good for them. This bill is like every other cheap product in drugstores and supermarkets across America that’s been covered in pink packaging, marketed as the solution women have been waiting for, and sold for twice what it’s worth. We know women are smarter than that. Democrats who have assumed that women will always follow their agenda realize they are running out of time, and that’s why they have stooped to a stunt like H.R. 7. Women in America are embracing their power and potential in ways they never have before. I’m not talking about the record number of women in Congress; I’m talking about the historic, groundbreaking number of women in the workforce. More than half of the record number of new jobs created in the past year have gone to women. More women are stepping up to start and lead businesses—to be job creators themselves—than ever before. Women need representatives in Washington who will cheer for them, not their rich lawyers. If Democrats want to champion a bill to make life easier for trial lawyers, that’s their choice, but they should be honest about it and, for once, bypass the opportunity to talk down to hardworking women everywhere. For the women who work today because they must, I am glad that they have legal protections I didn’t when I was in their shoes. It was women like them who paved the way for suffrage a century ago. It was women like them who made equal pay for equal work the law of the land, and it’s women like them today and tomorrow who will continue to clarify, to sharpen, and exemplify what “a more perfect union” was always supposed to look like. This House should follow their lead. I yield back. |
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