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This 50th Anniversary I’m Ready to Work

Posted by Fatima Goss Graves, Vice President for Education and Employment | Posted on: August 28, 2013 at 01:08 pm

This afternoon I’m headed to the Lincoln Memorial for the 50th Anniversary celebration of the March on Washington. Today’s event is both a commemoration and call to action. Thousands are gathering to remember the 1963 March and to outline the remaining civil rights agenda.

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Important Regulation Clarifies Rules of the Road for Health Care Law

Posted by Dania Palanker, Senior Counsel | Posted on: August 27, 2013 at 05:36 pm

Today, the IRS and Department of Treasury issued final regulations that bring us one step closer to expanding coverage options for millions of uninsured Americans who will start enrolling in new health plans on October 1. These final rules finalize the health care law’s requirement that individuals carry a minimum level of insurance. This requirement is central to improving women’s access to the health insurance market by making it financially possible for insurers to provide coverage to all who seek it at a reasonable cost.

Unlike today’s market, the 2014 health insurance market will provide comprehensive coverage to women regardless of pre-existing conditions that includes coverage for essential health benefits including maternity coverage – and women won’t be charged more than men for that coverage. In order to make that market a reality, it is important that people don’t wait to get sick to enroll in coverage.

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Dear Fox News, Women Should NOT Pay More for Health Insurance

Posted by Anna Benyo, Senior Health Policy Analyst | Posted on: August 27, 2013 at 03:31 pm

Some of the commentators in this news clip make the argument that women should pay more than men for the same health insurance. The argument goes something like this: women need things like mammograms, and pap tests, and their bodies are different, so they should pay more for health insurance.

 

 

Does that seem fair?

We did the research and the fact is that women are charged more for health coverage simply because they are women. In states that have not prohibited the practice of “gender rating” the vast majority of plans in the individual market charge women more. In fact, 92%, of best-selling plans in the individual market gender rate—for example, charging 40-year-old women more than 40-year-old men for coverage.

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Women’s Equality Day: The Fight for Voting Rights Continues

Posted by Amy Tannenbaum, Program Assistant | Posted on: August 26, 2013 at 12:08 pm

August 26th marks Women’s Equality Day, the anniversary of the passage of the 19th amendment prohibiting U.S. citizens from being denied the right to vote on account of sex. The 19th amendment is widely known for giving women the right to vote.

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One Year After Todd Akin Made His Infamous "Shut That Whole Thing Down Remark" Nothing's Changed

What changes after a politician gets caught using a lie as the basis for cruel and extreme policies, there is national outrage, and elections are lost (including his) because of it? 

Apparently, nothing. That's what our new report, ‘Shut That Whole Thing Down:’ A Survey of Abortion Restrictions Even in Cases of Rape, discovered. 

One year ago today, Todd Akin made the statement that would outrage the public and ultimately torpedo his Senate campaign. In explaining his opposition to abortion even in cases of rape, he said, "It seems to me, first of all, from what I understand from doctors, that's really rare. If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down." 

And what has happened since? In our survey of state and federal legislative action, we documented that politicians and political commentators continue to make the same remarks and they continue to introduce and enact legislation to stop women from getting abortion, including women who are pregnant due to rape.

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Child Care: It’s Time to Move it Up on Our Country’s Priority List

Posted by Helen Blank, Director of Child Care and Early Learning | Posted on: August 19, 2013 at 01:49 pm

Crushed by the Cost of Child Care,” an article in Sunday’s New York Times, highlights a dilemma faced by millions of families. It is not a new or a surprising story. Ask any parent in any community across this country what one of your biggest challenges is and they will say finding affordable and high-quality child care.

While we have made some progress over the years, putting in place programs to help low-income families with the cost of child care, federal and state funding is actually on a downward slide. It is hard to explain why we do not provide more help to families in affording child care given that the case for investing in young children is so strong. Child care plays two critical roles that support our economy. It helps children access the high-quality early learning environments that they need to succeed and it helps parents work and support their families. Yet we have not found the will to ensure that all our children and their families, especially the most vulnerable, have the early childhood opportunities they need.

For the sake of nation’s children, families, and economy, we need to do better. This will require policymakers to step up their commitment to child care.

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Pay Negotiation and the Gender Wage Gap: For CEOs and for All of Us

Posted by Marisa Pereira Tully, Volunteer | Posted on: August 19, 2013 at 10:02 am

A new report came out from Bloomberg last week on the topic of negotiation and the gender pay gap. It caught my eye for two reasons: (1) last year I was part of a team that worked on this issue under the direction of gender and negotiation powerhouse, Dr. Linda Babcock (check out “Women Don’t Ask” for a great introduction to the topic), and, (2), shortly afterward, I failed at negotiating my own salary in real life. Less than a month after I spent my entire “Spring Break 2012” holed up in a coffee shop working on our project focused on, once again, the VERY issue of encouraging more women to negotiate, I accepted a summer position at the offered wage without missing a beat. Why didn’t I negotiate? Two main reasons are commonly identified for women not negotiating, the first is that they aren’t aware it’s an option, and the second is that they’re concerned about negatively perceived for doing so. For me it was the latter and I had good reason – a 2006 study found that when women initiate negotiations, both men and women are less likely to want to hire them.

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Last Week, Chained CPI—This Week, Raising the Retirement Age and More

Posted by Joan Entmacher, Vice President for Family Economic Security | Posted on: August 14, 2013 at 10:47 am

It’s August in Washington, DC and Congress is out of town—but the House Ways and Means Committee wants to know what you think about additional ways to cut Social Security benefits.

Through last week, Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-MI) invited comments on adopting the chained CPI: a proposal that would reduce annual cost-of-living adjustments for Social Security and cut the value of benefits more and more every year. Seven thousand of you joined us to tell the Committee that the chained CPI is especially harmful to women. Now the Committee is asking for comments by August 29 on other proposed benefit cuts, including raising the retirement age and changing the benefit formula to reduce benefits.

Raising the retirement age is really just another way to cut benefits. It reduces benefits no matter when an individual claims benefits. Increasing the retirement age from 67 (the current retirement age for people born in 1960 or later) to 69 would reduce benefits by about 13 percent, whether an individual claims benefits at 65, 67, 69—or even 70.

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