There are lots of reasons for that gap between men’s and women’s wages but to me, the big one is the work-family issue. Trying to juggle children and a job is tough under any circumstances, but especially if you’re shooting for the kind of career that involves long hours at work and being on call 24-7. Gail Collins Read Quote
Sarah Palin is an heir to the women’s movement. She has not been constrained by gender. At no point in her life has she thought, ‘I can’t do that because I’m a woman.’ Gail Collins Read Quote
The one big, humongous, immense thing that we didn’t change, that we didn’t figure out how to deal with is, if men and women are both going to work throughout their lives, who’s going to take care of the kids? Gail Collins Read Quote
Elections have to have at least a little meaning. Obama ran on income tax hikes for the wealthy. People knew they were voting for that. They ‘want’ that. And it’s good policy. Gail Collins Read Quote
I did some research once on the way people in the past imagined the year 2000. They tended to picture the things they already had getting more sophisticated – flying cars, self-cleaning windows. And the folks in the early 1900s had a wildly optimistic estimate of the future of pneumatic tubes. Gail Collins Read Quote
If immigration reform passes, it’ll be a big victory for sanity – nobody really believes it’s healthy for a country to have millions and millions of undocumented noncitizens living in the shadows. But it’ll also be a sign that the Republican Party has gotten tired of letting the Tea Party push it around. Gail Collins Read Quote
Texas has no income tax, which is a big draw for corporate executives who do business there. But it’s hardly tax-free. The property taxes are high for a Southern state. The sales taxes are high. One study found that the bottom 20 percent of the Texas population pays 12 percent of its income in state and local taxes. Gail Collins Read Quote
I don’t think the folks in the low-tax states really want to go into a fairness discussion. Residents of Connecticut and New York would love to remind them how much they pay in federal taxes to support programs for Mississippi and South Dakota. Gail Collins Read Quote
The work-family divide is the biggest issue for American women. But in some ways it’s amazing how adjusted society has become to it. In the 1970s, as women began to take more jobs, society was reeling. Gail Collins Read Quote
Women are needed in the military because there aren’t enough soldiers, and we’re seeing more women serve. Gail Collins Read Quote