Hillary Clinton and being female in America

Alamom

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Wed Jun-13-07 06:43 AM
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Hillary Clinton and being female in America

Edited on Wed Jun-13-07 06:44 AM by Alamom

http://www.statesmanjournal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070612/OPINION/70609026

Hillary Clinton and being female in America

By MARIE COCCO

June 12, 2007

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Maybe Hillary Rodham Clinton didn't need the Supreme Court -- Lord knows, not this Supreme Court -- to remind people of the extraordinary historical moment her candidacy represents. But now the court's right-wing majority has decided that it doesn't matter if women are paid less than men who do the same job, year after year -- even decade after decade.

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Employers who've been found to discriminate early in a woman's career can't be held liable for the subsequent years she's underpaid, the high court ruled recently. Only if a woman finds out, pretty much as soon as it happens, that she's being paid less for the same work -- then takes action within 180 days -- can she sue. And if this pay gap goes undetected for several years, compounding annually as raises are based on a percentage of the woman's lower pay? Tough luck.

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Then this March, Clinton promoted comprehensive ``paycheck fairness'' legislation that anticipated a crucial difficulty that was illuminated by the Ledbetter case. Because an individual worker's pay is generally not made public, few women can discern when they are being paid less than their male counterparts. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg points out in her dissent to the Supreme Court decision that a third of private-sector employers prohibit workers from discussing their wages with co-workers. Clinton's bill calls for, among other things, a prohibition on businesses retaliating against employees who share salary information. If you don't know you're being discriminated against you can't do a thing about it -- which is, apparently, how the majority of the Supreme Court wants it.

Not much about Clinton's effort got attention. These ``women's issues'' don't involve a celebrity pregnancy or an anorexic actress or even the exhausting argument over abortion. Even when Clinton does draw news coverage for her work on matters that concern women, it almost always comes with the caveat that she is stroking her political ``base,'' a sneer that reduces women to a special-interest group. Hint to political reporters: Women are a majority of Democratic primary voters, and a majority of voters in the electorate as a whole.

It is not that men do not support fairness for women -- Clinton's forthcoming measure to correct the new timing problem set by the Supreme Court ruling is likely to be co-sponsored by Democratic Sens. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts and Tom Harkin of Iowa, among others. The broader Paycheck Fairness Act also has men as co-sponsors. But neither Clinton's legislative agenda, nor even the prescience of it, is what makes her first-woman-who-could-become-president candidacy novel.

What sets her apart is that she gets it.

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