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Mr. President, everything you do as president will affect women, and most of it will affect women disproportionately. The country has been through economic upheaval and hundreds of thousands of families have lost more than they thought possible.
Much of the election was about the economy. As you begin your presidency and look toward ways to turn the economy around, I ask you this: Make economic equality for women a priority. Remember that, as a group, women have lower wages, smaller incomes, less savings, fewer pensions, and lower Social Security checks—so we have less ability to ride out an economic downturn or pull ourselves and our families out of a setback.
We need not only the right to fair and equal pay but also a realistic way to enforce that right; not only a higher minimum wage, but a living wage, because people who work hard every day should not have to go to bed hungry in order to make ends meet. Poor women and other vulnerable and underserved women are often left out of so-called "stimulus plans," as they were in October’s massive Wall Street "bailout," even though they are trying to support themselves and their families against great odds. We need to repair the safety net and make sure all women have a clear path to lift themselves and their families out of poverty.
True economic equality will not come until the day women are in the United States' Constitution. The rights of U.S. women must not be subject to the whims of any Congress or presidential administration, and we must join the rest of the world in ratifying the U.N. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). When discrimination ends, true prosperity begins. The women of the U.S. and the women of the world are watching.
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