Political Quotes

“I thank the Senator from Massachusetts again for all of her extremely hard and important work to expand economic opportunity and security for women and their families. She has been an extremely important voice in this debate, and I am delighted she is joining us today. Yesterday I held a hearing on this topic in the Senate Budget Committee. We invited a working mother, whose name was AnnMarie Duchon, to testify about some of the challenges that she had faced. AnnMarie told us that she loves her job at the University of Massachusetts- Amherst, but since the day that she started, she made a lower salary than her male counterpart who was doing the exact same job. They had the exact same responsibilities. Both of them had taken a pay cut to accept that job, and they both graduated from the same university in the same year. When AnnMarie found out that he was making more than she was--even though they had the exact same resume, qualifications, and years of graduation--she went in and asked for a raise. She was told that she couldn't have one. She stayed on that job and continued to work hard. It wasn't until her husband's job was at risk that she started thinking about how much those lost wages meant to her and her family. She ran the numbers, and she found out that over the years she had missed out on more than $12,000 in wages compared to her male counterpart who was doing the exact same work. AnnMarie and her husband are first generation college graduates.…”