Okay, let's see if we can agree on some facts;
1) we lost in Wisconsin.
2) single women vote for democrats by a huge margin.
3) there's a 44 point swing in voting patterns among women, depending on if they are married or not.
4) men, specifically white men, tend to vote for republicans, before and after marriage.
5) married people are much more likely to vote.
6) "men and married women" outnumber "everyone else"
7) we want to win elections, and huge armies moving through the US is a bad outcome.
Are we agreed so far?
The reasons are complicated, but my feeling is that pay equity as an issue is part of this - is not a winning platform. It seems like a good idea in the abstract, because people doing the qualitatively and quantitatively same work should be paid the same. It is in fact the law. Unfortunately, that's not the metric that organizations use to measure the gap. To the extent that a pay gap exists, it is because men and women do qualitatively and quantitatively different work. When a woman marries, leaves work to have a child and her husband gets laid off, it is vitally important to both of them that HE go back to work as quickly and as profitably as possible. "Pay equity? Who cares? I can't go back to work yet!"
Instead of pay equity, (a wedge issue which uses distorted statistics that are irrelevant to the individuals concerned AND puts us in the minority), how about child care? If childcare were affordable for the couple, she could return to work at whatever she chooses giving the family a little slack to ride out the cyclical nature of his employment.
This provides direct, tangible benefit for her and is not an open attack on him. We need to put more attention into issues that benefit the family and not seek opportunities to poke him with the stick.
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