Last week, the National Economic Council released a report called Jobs and Economic Security for America’s Women, which addresses the effects of the recession on women and the benefits of the Obama administration’s economic policies for women. The report details the steps that the administration has taken to “promote economic expansion and job growth for women, train and educate women for quality jobs, support working women at home and in their jobs, and support women in retirement and in between jobs.” According to a White House press release, women are the majority of college graduates, nearly 50 percent of the workforce, and increasingly becoming their family breadwinners. Nevertheless, in a press release the ACLU argues that women’s increased presence in the workplace causes them to be heavily impacted by the recession. The ACLU thus argues that the White House Report points to the need for the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would enable workers to fight unequal wages, in particular women who typically earn 77 cents to each dollar earned by men. Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office, Laura Murphy, commented, “the administration deserves credit for all they have done to enhance women’s equality, including the signing of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and establishing the National Equal Pay Enforcement Task Force, but equality can’t truly be achieved until the Paycheck Fairness Act becomes law.”
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