Obama Promotes Equal Pay for Women in Weekly Address

President Obama focused on Women’s History Month in his weekly address yesterday, and used it as an opportunity to push for passage of the Paycheck Fairness Act. The Paycheck Fairness Act updates and strengthens the Equal Pay Act of 1963 (EPA), which made it illegal for employers to pay unequal wages to men and women who perform substantially the same work. In light of the White House Council on Women and Girls’ recent report on the state of women in the U.S., Obama had this to say:

Today, women still earn on average only about 75 cents for every dollar a man earns. That’s a huge discrepancy. And at a time when folks across this country are struggling to make ends meet and many families are just trying to get by on one paycheck after a job loss, it’s a reminder that achieving equal pay for equal work isn’t just a women’s issue. It’s a family issue.