President Obama touted his work on equal pay for women, citing his own family background at the town hall debate.
“You know, I was raised by a single mom who had to put herself through school while looking after two kids. And she worked hard every day, and made a lot of sacrifices to make sure we got everything we needed,” Obama said. “My grandmother, she started off as a secretary in a bank. She never got a college education, even though she was smart as a whip. She worked her way up to become a vice president of a local bank, but she hit the glass ceiling. She trained people who would end up become her bosses during the course of her career. She didn’t complain — that’s not what you did in that generation.
“And this is one of the reasons why one of the first — the first bill I signed, was something called Lily Ledbetter bill. It’s named after this amazing woman, who had been doing the same job as a man for years, found out she was getting paid less. And the Supreme Court said that she couldn’t bring suit because she should have found out about it earlier — she had no way of finding out about it. We fixed that.
“That’s an example of the kind of advocacy that we need because women are increasingly the breadwinners in the family. This is not just a women’s issue. This is a family issue. This is a middle class issue. That’s why we’ve got to fight for it.”
