As I noted last week, the Lilly Ledbetter Pay Fair Act is on hold for the time being.  It seems likely to stay that way until there is a new President and some change in Congress.  That it will be a big campaign issue is becoming more clear quite quickly.

In a blistering article in Slate Magazine, Dahlia Lithwick accuses those who oppose the legislation as being paternalistic chauvinists.  She mocks Senate Republicans who blocked a vote on the Ledbetter proposal because of their desire “to protect women.”  In other words, says Ms. Lithwick, women are just “too stupid” to obtain fair pay on their own with or without a change in the law.  Those sound like campaign fightin’ words, particularly when she ends her article by saying, “So how dumb are we?  Well, if we don’t vote some people who actually respect women into Congress soon, we just may be as dumb as those senators think.”

Ms. Lethwick and other commentators single out Senator McCain (who was not present for the vote that blocked the legislation from being considered further but who did, for the first time, express his opposition to the proposed law) for special disdain.  According to McCain, he believes there continues to be disparity between what men and women earn at work, but there are better ways to help women find better-paying jobs.  “They need the education and training, particularly since more and more women are heads of their households, as much or more than anybody else.”  According to Ms. Lethwick, McCain is saying gender pay disparity “will somehow be fixed by more training for women as opposed to less discrimination by men.”  That’s a line that will no doubt be borrowed by the Democratic nominee in the fall.

One of the other commentators referenced above, Rachel Larimore, takes a less provocative view.  Acknowledging pay disparity, she reminds readers that some of the disparity isn’t due to discrimination but to the desire of some women to take less financially rewarding jobs that allow for the flexibility they want to spend more time at home with their children.  Moreover, some women (for child-related reasons) don’t work at all for a while.  When they re-enter the workforce, their pay is five or ten years behind a man who has been working all along.

I don’t know Ms. Lithwick or Ms. Larimore, but they both make good points.  The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act will become the battle cry for those who’ve had it with unequal pay.  To those in that camp, anyone who opposes the Act will be stupid, to borrow Ms. Lithwick’s freely-used term. 

I don’t see either side as stupid.  I see honest disagreement.  Along this line, I like one of the things said by Ms. Larimore:  “We have a long, long way to go, and pay equity is an enormous part of that.  But I think the solutions are more likely to come from within–more women executives, more women running businesses–than to come from on high by government decree.”