Clinton Renews Call for Equal Pay for Women

President Clinton on Wednesday renewed his call for equal pay for working women, saying the country has “the opportunity of a generation” to correct the inequity during good economic times.

The president, along with First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and Labor Secretary Alexis M. Herman, played host to a roundtable discussion with women who related their battles to address salary disputes with lawsuits as well as on-the-job diplomacy. The event was held to commemorate Equal Pay Day.

“There are still those who claim that this is a made-up problem, that any wage gap between men and women can be explained away by the choices women make,” Mrs. Clinton said.

“There is still a sizable gap between men’s and women’s salaries that can best be explained by one phenomenon: the continuing presence and the persistent effect of discrimination, sometimes in very subtle ways,” said the first lady, who practiced law in Arkansas while her husband pursued his public service career.

The president, who counted himself among “a small but vocal radical caucus” of husbands whose wives have out-earned them, said Congress should take advantage of the nation’s low unemployment and booming economy and pass the Paycheck Fairness Act introduced last month.

The legislation would allow women to sue their employers for unlimited compensatory and punitive damages, in addition to the limited damages and back-pay awards now available under federal law to remedy pay violations. That would bring women on par with other minorities in wage discrimination matters.

The president’s Council of Economic Advisors reported last year that women earn about 75 cents for every dollar a man earns, a narrower gap than in 1963, when President Kennedy signed the original Equal Pay Act. Then, women workers earned 58 cents for every dollar paid to male workers.