La Crosse Tribune: "Our View: State GOP policies hurting women"

At the same time that Wisconsin is leading the nation in job loss under Scott Walker, his Republican Party has salted the earth for economic development and instead focused on enacting extreme social policy that has devastated programs critical to women and children’s health, interfered in the relationship between women and their doctors and stripped pay equity protections for women, veterans, seniors and disabled workers.

Despite their best efforts to portray their shameful War on Women as mere "fiction," or as Reince Priebus said, an invented war akin to an attack on caterpillars, the Republican Party is unable to hide from their radical agenda that harms women and families.

The La Crosse Tribune today editorialized that Scott Walker and his Republican Party have enacted policies that harm women. The entire article appears below in its entirety, or you can read it online by clicking here.

La Crosse Tribune: "Our View: State GOP policies hurting women"

Scott Walker has masterfully followed the political tradition that governors travel around the state to announce bill signings.

Yet when it came time to signing a bill that repealed a law that made enforcing equal pay laws easier, Walker did it without fanfare. He and other Wisconsin Republicans — who pushed through the bill on party lines — should have held a ceremony surrounded by pregnant and barefoot women in a kitchen. Because that seems to be where some leaders in the party think they belong.

The 2009 Equal Pay Enforcement Act gave workers the right to sue employers for wage discrimination in state circuit rather than federal court. Backers of the repeal said the law left employers vulnerable to frivolous claims and harmful punitive damages.

State Sen. Jennifer Shilling, D-La Crosse, said Wisconsin ranked 36th among the 50 states in the wage gender gap when the 2009 law went into effect and is now 24th. That’s the kind of positive progress we want in a state that should value equal pay for equal work. Nationally women are paid on average about 77 cents to every dollar men earn, and in Wisconsin it’s 75 cents.

But now we may head in reverse, thanks to the rantings of party leaders like Sen. Glenn Grothman, one of the authors of the bill. Grothman said pay discrimination is a myth perpetuated by liberal women’s groups, and he thinks the main reason women are paid less than men is because they put a high priority on raising children and homemaking. Money, Grothman said, is more important to men.

Never mind that in two-thirds of American households the mother is the primary or co-bread winner. Never mind that the quickest way for the females who draw Grothman’s biggest wrath — single mothers — to lift themselves out of poverty and dependency on welfare is through higher-paying jobs.

Wisconsin has been a proud champion of women’s rights and was the first state to ratify the 19th amendment granting women national suffrage in 1919.
That heritage came to life last week thanks to Wisconsin Supreme Court Chief Justice Shirley S. Abrahamson and Justice Ann Walsh Bradley during their forum “Wisconsin Women: Celebrating Their Contributions” before a crowd of 150 people at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, co-sponsored by the La Crosse Tribune.
Yet in the past year there have been several Republican-led bills that seem to suggest that we’re taking a step backward. Those bills — which were signed into law by Walker — include prohibiting abortion coverage through health insurance exchanges, requiring doctors to ask women seeking abortions if they were coerced and a law that requires schools to teach abstinence only and not discuss the use of contraception.

This week Walker announced that Wisconsin first lady Tonette Walker will conduct a statewide listening tour to “develop a deeper understanding of the challenges and opportunities related to helping children and families in Wisconsin’s systems move beyond cycles of harm.” Perhaps she will hear first-hand that continuing to pay women less for their work than men will not help them move out of those cycles.

It’s not just on a state level. U.S. Senate Republicans voted unanimously in 2010 to block the Paycheck Fairness Act that would have updated the Equal Pay Act of 1963. Apparently it has now become a platform of the party — gender pay gap is acceptable.

It’s become a talking point on the presidential race as well, with President Barack Obama campaign spokeswoman Lis Smith recently attacking Mitt Romney’s public support of Walker.

“Mitt Romney has repeatedly dismissed the effect of Republican efforts to roll back access to contraception and other health care services on the women’s vote, saying that he would appeal to women by talking about their economic concerns,” Smith said. “If this is the case, does Romney think women should have the ability to take their bosses to court to get the same pay as their male coworkers? Or does he stand with Governor Walker against this?”

The impact of the female vote in the Wisconsin governor recall race and in the fall presidential race will be large. Yet this is an issue that women and men should be concerned with.

There’s a large fundamental shift occurring in our workforce. The decline in manufacturing — jobs that were once the mainstay of working-class men — is continuing. If trends continue, women will make up the majority of breadwinners in this country in a generation.

Unless we’re not interested in better lives for our children and grandchildren, we all should care about equal pay issues.