Jeanne Shaheen: “I am proud to join Senator Mikulski and so many of the women in this body in support of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act…”

“I am proud to join Senator Mikulski and so many of the women in this body in support of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009. Early in the 1980s, I served on New Hampshire's Commission on the Status of Women. At that time, I chaired a committee that investigated and then reported on the status of women's employment in New Hampshire. At that time, women made 59 cents for every dollar a man earned. That report, which I was proud to coauthor, pointed out that, ultimately, pay disparity affects not just women, it affects their families and it affects the entire ability of working families to earn a good living. Over the course of a woman's lifetime, that pay discrimination is estimated to cost women between $700,000 and $1 million. As has been pointed out by the women who have spoken on this bill today, we have made some progress. Today, women make 77 cents for every dollar a man earns, but the conclusions our report made about the impact of this pay disparity for women are even truer today than they were in 1981, at the time of the report.”