Date: 2016-05-12
Speaker: CAROLYN B. MALONEY (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: New York

Mr. Speaker. I truly want to thank BONNIE WATSON COLEMAN for hosting this Special Order to talk about the Equal Rights Amendment. I cant think of anything that is more important than protecting the rights of half the population of America. We in Congress and in our country have helped other countries win their independence and craft their constitutions. One of the things we worked to place in that constitution is equality of treatment for all people. We have seen that countries that treat women well have less terrorism. less turmoil. and more economic stability. and that adds to the peace of the world. Yet we dont have women in the Constitution of the United States of America. [ 1715 I think it is long past due. and it doesnt cost any money. It just is an equality statement in a Constitution giving protection to half the population. I have come to this Congress and reintroduced the Equal Rights Amendment. We know that it passed in the 1970s. It fell three States short of ratification. You need 38 States. and 35 ratified it. It has already passed in this country before. and there is huge support. Currently. we have over 187 bipartisan cosponsors that have joined Bonnie and me in this effort. There is an old Chinese saying that women hold up half the sky. But what most women are concerned about is how they are treated while they are on the Earth. We want to be treated fairly on the Earth. The exclusion of womenhalf the populationfrom the Constitution has dire consequences. Last month we commemorated Equal Pay Day. or more appropriately. "Unequal Pay Day." when the average womans salary catches up with an average mans earning from the previous year. To put it simply. women have to work 31/2 months more than a male colleague doing the same job with the same pay to reach his equal pay. Now. I can say we have made progress. When I first entered the workforce. we were at 59 cents to the dollar. We have made progress. We are now at 79 cents to the dollar. But economists say that. if we continue at the same rate. it will be the year 2025 before anything near equality is reached in equality of pay. Given that fact. the economic state of women in the United States is unequal. unfair. and unacceptable if we want to ensure financial stability of American families and protect economic growth. It is very interesting. One study was done by Heidi Hartmann. who is a MacArthur Awardwinning economist. She stated that. if you just paid women equally. you would eliminate half the poverty in the United States. So everybody talks about job programs and everything else. Just pay women fairly and you would eliminate half the poverty in our country. That is an easy way to address opportunity and fair treatment. This unfairness of 79 cents to the dollar is also much. much more unfair when it goes to women of color. The pay gap is even larger. The pay gap has narrowed slightly over the years. but its impact is perhaps more detrimental today than ever before because women are participating in the workforce in record numbers. Increasingly. women are sometimes absolutely necessary for the income of the family. and some are single parents. as I am. I am a widow. When you treat a woman fairly. you are treating her husband fairly and her children fairly. With more women in the workforce because they have to work. bringing home a full. fair paycheck becomes more and more important. I recently asked the Joint Economic Committee democratic staff to study the effects of the gender gap. not just the 79 cents to the dollar. but what does it mean over a lifetime. This report. which was probably the most comprehensive. indepth report on the subject to date. looked at the pay gap by age. race. State. and congressional districts. What it showed is that. over the span of a lifetime. it compounded. Women are 75 percent more likely to live in poverty in their old age than their male counterparts. The unequal pay in the paycheck translates into lower pensions. lower Social Security. lower savings. and just less cash in the pocketbook. They say that. in 1 year over the lifetime of a woman. the average is that you lose over $500.000 in pay. That is just the pay. Then you have to compound it into all of the savings aspects that all of us rely on in our older age. We found that the gender gap varies widely by race. age. and State. Working mothersthis is so interesting. For a country that says we honor the family. we honor the mothers and the fathers. if you become a motherand many economists have written the same thingyou pay a penalty in the form of depressed wages when compared to working fathers and women without children. Women that become mothers. the study showed that they are paid lessthey call it the "mommy penalty"yet. men that become fathers are paid more. Men that become fathers are paid not only more than women. but they are paid more than men without children. So it is interesting. And the statistics are that men with children make 15 percent more than men without children and significantly more than women. Over a career. this disparity widens for women. making them more likely to live in poverty. Older women are the largest segment of poverty in our country. Women cannot support their families or fully participate in the economy when they are consistently paid less than men doing comparable work. This is bad for everyone. As you go through it. you wonder why does the gender gap persist and what can we do about it. In the past 30 years. the gender gap has been stuck at 79 cents to the dollar. After controlling for the complex factors that contribute to the gender gap. which could be leaving work to take care of children. taking care of an elderly parent. or other reasons. there is a 40 percent gap which many economists attribute to discrimination. Without the ERA. there is little to do. There is no recourse to fight gender discrimination when it does exist. The late Justice Antonin Scalia agreed and famously said. "Certainly the Constitution does not require discrimination on the basis of sex. The only issue is whether it prohibits it. It doesnt." I believe that Justice Scalia. who Ruth Bader Ginsburg called her closest friend on the Court. was doing the womens movement and likeminded men who care about women a favor by making this crystal clear. He was a strict constitutionalist. He went by the Constitution. His statement made it very clear: Women are not in the Constitution. therefore. I. as a Justice. and others would not protect them. We need to correct this. It is something that we could join hands and make happen. If we dont explicitly protect women in the Constitution. there can be no expectation for equality in the workforce. government. sports. or academia. There is no remedy for discrimination against women in the court. There have been some celebrated Supreme Court decisions that the dissent has said that this will be reversed in later years. and I believe it will. But they decided against women on the point that women arent in the Constitution. Well. lets change that. That is something we can do in this House: pass a bill that puts women in the Constitution of our great country. Leaving women out of the Constitution and legally defenseless harms all of us in other areas of our lives. The progress women have made can too easily be rolled back. laws can be repealed. and judicial attitudes can shift. Something as fundamental as equality of opportunity and rights should not be at the whim of who is on the Court. who is in the legislature. or any other law that could be put in place to roll rights back. I would say that equality for women is a fundamental right that the vast majority of this country supports. I polled it once. and 99 percent of the people in America said. yes. people should have equal rights. and. yes. they should have equality of opportunity. Yet. this fundamental aspect for half of the population of Americaand it is an important half of the population. Every man had a mother. Women are there working in the home. in the society. and in the communities. As we help and support and empower women. we empower our country and empower our economy. We cant compete and win in this world economy without using the strength of all of our people. That means not just talented men. but talented women. also. Ninety percent of the country actually thinks the Constitution already fully protects women because it seems so much like a nobrainer. If you asked anyone in this body. they would say "Of course women should be treated equally." "Of course I want my daughters and my sons to have equal opportunity." Properly valuing women is the right thing to do for our daughters. sisters. mothers. and grandmothers. It is also the closest thing to a silver bullet to stimulate the economy. If you just paid women equally. you would move so much more money into the economy that would have to be consumed and spent in the economy. I want to really thank the likeminded men and women who support the opportunity and the goal for women to be treated fairly. I believe this is an issue that we could all agree on. It is a fundamental right. I think that people believe in opportunity. This is one way to make sure that all of our citizens have the same opportunity. I want to thank BONNIE for bringing this issue to the floor. She brings it to the floor once a month. That shows a persistence and a commitment that I want to follow and want to support. I cant think of anything more important that we could spend our time on as a Nation or as individuals than helping people have the equal treatment and the equal opportunity that they so justly deserve in this great country. I just want to close by saying I wake up every morning and I say a prayer and I kiss the ground and thank God that I was born an American. There is no question in my mind that we are the greatest country on Earth. We treat our people the best. It is amazing. We just did a report that came out of the Presidents Office of Economic Advisers that shows that our economy is leading the world. The only thing that is hurting our economy is the suffering other economies that are pulling us down. We are a great country. But one of the reasons that we are so great is that we always strive to be better. I cant think of doing anything more important or better than treating all of our citizens equally and allowing them to have the same equal opportunity under our great flag and under our great Constitution. It is long past due to put women in the Constitution. I hope my colleagues will join me in helping to make this dream of equality a reality in the great country of the United States of America.