Good News for Women in the Stimulus Package
So, what's in the package for women? "Expanding health for them, child care, unemployment insurance, direct help in higher food stamps and energy assistance," said Joan Entmacher, vice president for family economic stability at the National Women's Law Center, a nonprofit, nonpartisan advocacy group that has worked closely with the Obama transition team and key members of Congress. "It also protects a lot of jobs for women in education, early education and social work services."
"You don't get everything you ask for," said Entmacher, "[But] we're pleased with the funding specifically targeted to child care and Head Start and other investment for children with disabilities."
Other feminist leaders are also guardedly positive about the stimulus.
"We're pretty happy with what we're seeing so far," said Kim Gandy, president of the National Organization for Women, "But we're waiting to see details."
Asked whether the Obama administration was more friendly to feminist advocacy groups than the last administration, Gandy laughed and replied, "Are you kidding? The difference is like night and day."
And in more good news for women:
Obama Signs the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act
President Barack Obama is signing into law an equal-pay bill that is popular with labor and women's groups and is expected to make it easier for workers to sue for decades-old discrimination.
Obama was to sign the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act on Thursday during an East Room ceremony, a move that effectively ends a 2007 Supreme Court decision that said workers had only 180 days to file a pay-discrimination lawsuit. Obama and fellow Democrats campaigned hard against the court decision and promised to pass legislation that would give workers more time to sue their employers for past discrimination…
The law is named for a woman who said she didn't become aware of a pay discrepancy until she neared the end of her 19-year career at a Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. plant in Gadsden Ala. She sued, but the Supreme Court in 2007 said she missed her chance…
“And I sign this bill for my daughters, and all those who will come after us, because I want them to grow up in a nation that values their contributions, where there are no limits to their dreams and they have opportunities their mothers and grandmothers never could have imagined.”
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