Gender equality is one of those issues that President Barack Obama takes very personally.
"We're going to keep pushing until every until every single girl has the rights and the opportunities and the freedom to go as far as her dreams will take her," Obama said after mentioning his own daughters at an event on Friday announcing new executive measures aimed at closing the pay gap that separates men and women at work.
That gap, Obama insists, is 21 cents, with a typical female full-time worker earning 79 cents for every dollar earned by a typical man. Another way of looking at it according to a White House statement is that the median wage for a woman in the U.S. is about $39,600, or only 79 percent of a man's median earnings of $50,400.
President Obama's history with the gender equality stretches back to his first days in office. In fact it was seven years ago Friday, that he signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, his first piece of legislation signed into law, and named for a woman who discovered she was being paid less than her male co-workers, but lost her case after years of fighting in the U.S. Supreme Court.
Related: President Obama Announces Rules for Closing Gender Pay Gap
Since then, Obama has signed into law the Affordable Care Act which prohibited insurance companies from charging higher insurance premiums based on sex. The law also required free coverage of well-woman exams, contraception and domestic violence counseling.
The president signed the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act in 2013, a measure which included improved protections for Native American women and members of the LGBT community.
For more detail Analysis: Obama Building a Legacy on Gender Equality Issues
"We're going to keep pushing until every until every single girl has the rights and the opportunities and the freedom to go as far as her dreams will take her," Obama said after mentioning his own daughters at an event on Friday announcing new executive measures aimed at closing the pay gap that separates men and women at work.
That gap, Obama insists, is 21 cents, with a typical female full-time worker earning 79 cents for every dollar earned by a typical man. Another way of looking at it according to a White House statement is that the median wage for a woman in the U.S. is about $39,600, or only 79 percent of a man's median earnings of $50,400.
President Obama's history with the gender equality stretches back to his first days in office. In fact it was seven years ago Friday, that he signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, his first piece of legislation signed into law, and named for a woman who discovered she was being paid less than her male co-workers, but lost her case after years of fighting in the U.S. Supreme Court.
Related: President Obama Announces Rules for Closing Gender Pay Gap
Since then, Obama has signed into law the Affordable Care Act which prohibited insurance companies from charging higher insurance premiums based on sex. The law also required free coverage of well-woman exams, contraception and domestic violence counseling.
The president signed the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act in 2013, a measure which included improved protections for Native American women and members of the LGBT community.
For more detail Analysis: Obama Building a Legacy on Gender Equality Issues
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