Republicans tell Women to sit in the back of the kitchen, reject Pay Equity.

Again, how is it Republicans can get away with insulting working women everywhere, the ones who turned out in the midterms and voted Republican, and deny them equal pay without some kind of blowback?

After the Great Recession, or what has been refered to as the "Mancession," women's role in the workplace has taken on greater importance as they take on the role of bread winner.

Huffington Post: Here's what we know from the 2010 election: issue #1 for women is economic security. That's why women gave the GOP a once in a generation opportunity to win us over. Absurdly, the Republican Party then turns around and pushes women away by thwarting our financial security. Ya know, us 'wimminz' -- the primary breadwinners or co-breadwinners in nearly two-thirds of American families.

Is the Paycheck Fairness Act perfect? No. Does it solve the disparity of pay that women face? Not totally. But it is a huge step towards women's financial security.

Sadly, here's what the GOP said to women Wednesday: "we don't believe women deserve to make the same wage as men for doing the same job." It's not much more complicated than that.

Marriage is not what it used to be, according to new data from TIME Magazine. The magazine conducted a poll with the Pew Research Center on the evolution of marriage, and reveals the results today on American Morning. Among the findings:
- 40 percent of Americans believe marriage is obsolete, up from 28 percent in 1979.

Newsweek: Opponents argued that the act would have been bad for small businesses, that it was unnecessary, redundant, and a vestige of an activist, knee-jerk feminist movement. The American Association of University Women recently compared women and men with the same education, same grades, same kinds of jobs—in other words, where all things were otherwise equal—and found that women earn 5 percent less in their very first year out of school. Ten years
later, even if they haven’t had children, they earn 12 percent less.

In another study, Catalyst found that female first-year MBA students earn $4,600 less than their male peers in their very first job.

But consider that men have been the victims of this recession in record numbers, to the point that it’s frequently called the “mancession” and that it has led to a 36 percent increase in the number of families depending on women’s earnings in the last year alone. Sure, those businesses may be saving money by paying those women less than they would have had to pay men, but is it really in the interest of the American public—yes, those small business owners included—to allow them to save at the expense of families?

At 77 cents on the dollar, women will lose an average of $431,000 in pay over 40 years. Those losses in income don’t just represent money in the bank. That’s money that could have been spent, and spent wisely. When you consider that women reinvest 90 percent of their income into their own community and family (vs. just the 30 to 40 percent that men invest), the impact could have been particularly powerful. How’s that for common sense?

Related articles

• A Setback in the Fight for Women's Pay Equality (newsweek.com)
• President Obama Meets With Equal Pay Advocates (whitehouse.gov)
• Republicans Block Bill Preventing Wage Discrimination In The Workplace (huffingtonpost.com)
• Marriage Obsolete? (abcnews.go.com)