by Nomad
Wage equality for women has been a long and difficult road, dating the Roosevelt era and before. Down through the years, step by step, progress against pay discrimination has plodded along, despite the numerous obstacles.
However, that struggle came to an abrupt halt last April when Republican Senators decided to shut down legislation to curb pay discrimination based on gender.
But the question is: will they pay a price in November?
In April of this year, Senate Republicans voted unanimously to block debate on proposed legislation aimed at closing the pay inequality between men and women. The GOP shut down a motion to proceed on the Paycheck Fairness Act with 53 votes for, and 44 against. That count fell short of the 60 needed to defeat a filibuster.
As a result, the legislation was pronounced DOA and it marked the third time this particular proposal has failed.
For Republicans, it was risky - some would say suicidal- thing to do with the midterms coming up. However, in a marvelous bit of spin, Kentucky Senator and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said the legislation was..
"just another Democratic idea that threatens to hurt the very people that it claims to help. ... We've already seen what five and a half years of Washington Democratic control has meant. More poverty and lower wages for women."
McConnell is facing Democratic opponent Alison Lundergan Grimes in the mid-terms. A new Republican poll has found that Grimes is leading McConnell by three points. The gap is even larger among women voters in his state. And that's no wonder: on a variety of women's issues, McConnell's voting record is hard to defend.
For example, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), an influential conservative think tank, claimed in an op-ed piece for The New York Times that:
"discrimination plays little role in pay disparities between men and women, and it threatens to impose onerous requirements on employers to correct gaps over which they have little control."
That's not too surprisingly an allegation for AEI. That organization has long promoted the "advancement of free enterprise capitalism." Its board of trustees is literally a who's who of leading business and financial executives. Hardly what one would call a disinterested party.
But for the Republicans, it is a link to the kind of power player that can finance re-election campaigns.
On the other side of the political aisle, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) told reporters, "For reasons known only to them, Senate Republicans don't appear to be interested in closing the wage gap for working women."
A Look Back
Turning back the clock 78 years, we see this June 1936 editorial cartoon in a New York newspaper. The cartoon shows an exhausted bedraggle cleaning women holding a note that reads:
Any wage they can get away with.
"It's Constitutional!" was the title. What could the cartoon be referring to?
Because it seemed so timely, it sparked my curiosity.
Just a two days before the publication of that cartoon, the conservative Supreme Court had handed down one of its most startling and most unpopular decisions.
In the case of Morehead vs. New York, the court struck down a New York minimum‐wage laws for women and children.
