We are trying very hard to conclude. [inaudible conversations] oh, yes sir. He has been a part of communications. As i have told you from the very beginning, i agree about this. And we cannot regulate the international affairs. And now frankly we are working on behalf of days. We have tried our best to facilitate communications. Thank you. I just want to take note. Your expectations that the Transpacific Partnership will happen this year. Professor . [laughter] [laughter] [inaudible] [inaudible] secondly onbase, did i understand you correctly to say and i would hope and expect that this will be completed and ratified before the end of the Obama Administration and i guess that my question related to that is since next year is obviously a very Political Year in the United States, if it cannot be ratified by the end of the administration and this administration, do you think it is important to have it completed by the end of the administration . And then have a completed agreement, up in the next administration . [inaudible] and congress, if that can be approved. In the way that this will conclude in september. It is part of this. [inaudible] and it can be concluded by congress. And indeed it is part of the debate [inaudible] and we will conclude this, that is already part of it. So that is the situation. Very good. Im going to ask the forgiveness of the audience. We are at 3 00 oclock, i mean 4 00 oclock, and we promised you promptly that we would adjourn because you have other commitments and so let me just express the appreciation to you on behalf of everyone. I must say that your can do and positive, happy warrior outlook is inspirational and we have high regard for you as one committed to a highly independent and very healthy bilateral relationship. So we thank you very much for being here, zhu guangyao. It has been our pleasure. Thank you. Coming up on cspan2, our discussion on the state of working women in the United States and then they look at government surveillance and technology. Then chinas vice finance minister talking about the impact of the countrys economy on the world. Next the National Partnership for women and families discusses issues related to women, including paycheck equality family leave, and pregnancy discrimination. From washington journal, this is 55 minutes. We have a roundtable this morning on the state of working women in the United States. Our guest is vicki shabo, Vice President of the National Partnership for women and families. Thank you for joining us thank you for having me. We also say good morning to veronique de rugy. Thank you for being with us as well. Thank you for having me. When we have that broad topic, the state of women in the u. S. On the what is the most important issue out there to you i think that that the thing i would like to start with an emphasized his how good the women have it as opposed to the last 60 years, a lot of the conversation we were having on this issue tends to treat the problems as if we have this and i think it is really worth pointing to it at higher rates of graduation of women versus men, more than ever i think a lot of women enjoy flexibility at work. And i think its not so much about gender as it is about the state of the economy and there are times when men face unemployment and recovery and lower wages and i dont know that its quite specific with the bigger issue that i see on the labor market. There has been incredible progress to women over the past 50 years. But i dont think that we have come far enough. And we just sent a report out this week showing that women still in 78 of what men are earning and those are women that are working fulltime year round we are working fulltime yearround 56 cents for latina women and some others at 71 cents. And both of those are fulltime in yearround education level womens opportunities have progressed from this includes kinds of flexibility policies and still underneath it all there is still some determination. We have some numbers on the bottom of the screen. We have lines for republicans and democrats and independents and we have plenty of time to talk things through and i wanted to follow up on some of the numbers that was put out and the president uses a number, similar to 77 and so what do you make of that figure . I think its a misleading figure that has been widely debunked by economists on both sides of the aisle that have looked at it and even the Washington Post and Glenn Kessler and others. And even the economist and economic advisers they all acknowledge that the problem of that figure is that it tends to indicate that women that work in the same position come in the same number of hours they are paid much less what economists have found is that when you control the number of hours worked, when you control for whether women work and have children and have taken a lot of time off that gap almost disappears. Life choices made by men and women in the Labor Department show what we have called fulltime and its not exactly the same thing and then 7. 75 hours. So we have to be careful and there is a wide discrimination between the women and men doing exactly the same thing, having the same level of experiences. I am very glad that you brought all of that up. I think the president s figure is somewhere around here when we have made a lot of progress. And that is right, but that is not is looking at the jobs or the exact number of hours or a couple of hours last. But what we see is that there are all these factors at play and there is a reason that i bring up wage policies. And that is why we have this and it constrains how women are able to exist in the workplace and so the number that exists that cannot be explained is still between seven and 10 and that 70 wage gap started off for college dedicated women and men. We have our first caller, please, please go ahead. Hello, i would like to direct this question to vicki and anyone else who has information please help out. When i am working we gave the statistics out a little bit earlier on. I assumed that asians probably make equal or average than fulltime workers, where do africanamerican men and latino men matchup statistically because i think that if you look at them individually or separately you will see that its a majority of them soaring above everyone elses and men of color. And so do you know where i can find those statistics out. I am so glad you asked the question. When we are comparing this that is because you are right, there is a wage gap is well between white men and africanamerican men and latino men as well. That is one of the things that we have pointed out it is indeed comparing things that almost shouldnt be compared. If you really want to compare people were making this with this number for black women and hispanics compared to them because it is a weird choice, its bigger than it should be. There are concerns about a lot of evidence. A lot of them have been turning into a class of wages and these are issues that we need to consider. Thank you for calling elizabeth, good morning. I wonder why why some people think that just because a man is married and has kids that he needs a bigger waves than a woman. If i could just start i dont think that anyone thinks this. I think that what the data shows is one of the reasons why men may make more money than women is because they are overly represented in professions that are high risk and very intense and hours as opposed to women and it is true that women are still the ones that take care of their children and they are the ones taking Maternity Leave they want requiring flexibility or meeting flexibility. So its not that men should have higher wages but it is a function of the professional choices that are made. So i think that choices are a little bit of the debate and that has a lot to do with these factors that we were talking about and that if we had those we would be in a better place with more equal society. Its very welldocumented when it comes to comparing fulltime workers and its interesting. And i went and spoke about this and the wage gap between both of those. A little bit of perspective from the joint economic committee, this is on the democratic side two thirds of families rely on income they generally contribute about 40 of the Household Income and among 38 of married couples. We have jerome on the line. Over the last six years you could say the same thing about race relations. But the news proves that differently. Women are far more even today, far more less likely to have say over their bodies, they are losing their rights daily, the power shift is apparent to anyone who is paying attention that women are beginning to step up and say that we have had enough and we are doing this for others. That is why would like to say that women are still behind and i think that sometimes the dogs are smarter than we are. Thank you for calling. If women think that they are behind. Women face a lot of difficulty its a lot to juggle and its hard to juggle work. And i think that they are very capable of stepping up for themselves and changing the culture. We need to commend this and we really need to talk about how this is not the way we want to live in we are going to change things and we have made tremendous progress. And again does that mean we can go home and did not care and never talk about it . Absolutely not. Do not knowledge in and trying to pretend that women today are still in a state of complete oppression where their rights are curtailed in the u. S. I think it is an understatement. This for a couple more minutes, can you remind us of the history of equal pay act . When did it come about and what was it designed to do and what is it designed to do . The equal pay act was signed by john kennedy. And they basically said that women should be paid equally to men based upon skills and responsibilities and experience. And that was an incredible first step. And so the historic first step and there are a couple of issues still. One is its pretty easy for employers to discriminate and pay women and men different amounts based upon business necessities. The second issue is that the remedies arent as good as some of the latest under title vii which is equal opportunity. So we also need to create policies whereby women or nobody where people are not retaliated against for simply sharing this information. And often we hear about people like Lilly Ledbetter but they did not have the right work place setting to talk about it many face retaliation for talking about her for talking about it. Some of the details that you have touched on related to job performance, not gender it strengthens remedy is, pay discriminations, it establishes training programs. Where is that legislation right now with congress . Knew he can speak more to this because i havent followed stepbystep where the legislation is. Where do you think about this and updating the older law. I think that we are fighting a battle with misguided data. We have established that women tend to work fewer hours they work the same amount of time women doing the same thing should be paid the same but the reality is having a flexible labor market and a growing economy where they have to compete for employees and im very concerned about having these regulations because they may make them more expensive and less desirable. I think that we have to be very careful, all of the situations mean that its going to be harder than there are tradeoffs with everything. Good morning to you. Hello, how are you. Im wow, how are you. Pretty good. I would like to talk about and i dont hear very often when they talk about day care and health with day care i have a Family Member who is 27 years old and what they give him his respite care, he gets 15 hours a week where he can go out with a person out into society. And the rest of the time he is at home or with the other Family Members went to the store and everything. One week is 168 hours minus 15 and how would you like to spend [inaudible] with your loved ones. They keep decreasing it. And he had companionship and respite and they said that they had to do things separately like you could do this but you have to, you know the caretaker had to be you know it was separated. And you could go out or stay home depending on how they could go out. They said okay, we will combine them, you can use that time, it was 30 hours total but they never change the hours come and they said okay, they kept it at 15 and im just wondering how are they still doing this so people can go out to work. My Family Member would love to work. It especially resounds with the supports that we need and one of the interesting things that we have really been looking at a lot of the caregiving crisis in this country both in terms of the way that caregivers are paid in the professionalization of this industry and there are a lot of people talking about this and we also need to deal with those professions with Family Members that have these conditions and women in particular are being forced to leave the workforce until we need to be better about recognizing the changing demographics around work and care and that includes to the workforce. There is a town hall, we have talked about it as we have triple the tax credit. Which would translate to potentially an additional 900 per year. And that is going to make a big difference in a lot of families. At the federal level there should be one of our top Budget Priorities and you know its in everyones interest to make sure that our kids, and i say our kids because the one thing i really believe is that even if youre single and your kids are grown or if they are like mine that will go to soon and think that im boring and they dont want to hang out with us as much as they used to your kid is an important person to me as well and that is not out of charity but because your child, if he is doing well, that means he is paying taxes and contributing to society and that is a good investment for me. What do you make of what he had to say . I have some reluctance but this is a better solution than mandating child care benefits in the workplace because that could really have bigger implications and negative consequences for women. That being said, i will say that we only talked about extending the tax credits and we are not actually addressing some real issues and married women face. So there is a serious marriage tax penalty with earners. 72 make significantly less than their husband or less than or then. Singles. The last dollar you earn of your smaller weight is taxed at the highest tax rates of your husband. So that means if you are a woman who wants to work, and if you dont make that much money, you have a tremendous disincentive to work because the tax rates you will face is quite significant, compared to a single woman who will face these have implications and if we could address this, it could leave more cash with women and their families to take care of childcare without causing a further burden. Host vicki shabo . Guest taxes are not my area of expertise, but families have real expenses. Families have to struggle to meet make and meet. Make ends meet. When they have a parent who needs care, when they come of themselves, are ill. We have to do a better job in this country off of getting a policy to reflect the very real needs are workers have. We need to find ways for them to do both. Host did you want to add something to echo guest i just wanted to add one thing. The other thing we are not addressing is that if we had more immigration in this country, it would help women. Because and it would help, obviously, the woman who lives abroad and wants to come and live and work in the united dates. But one of the things that the economic literature shows is that women especially low low income women benefit tremendously from immigration because that makes available more childcare options, more housework options. Another thing is lifting a lot of the regulations that get in the way of more people, more women or men, for that matter, entering the childcare business. Right now, there is a lot of occupational licensing. You have to have and requirements that increase the barrier democratic caller. Married. Caller good morning. I just want to ask a question about something, so far i have not heard anyone address. That is, i would like to know how pay disparity impacts women after retirement. In other words, if the taxpayer supplementing women in retirement didnt earn as much as men i never hear anybody adjusting that particular problem. Thank you. Host vicki shabo . Guest that is a fantastic question. I agree with you, it is a piece of the debate that is probably not talked about enough. The pay gap, the disparities that women are facing over a lifetime to hundreds of thousands adds up to hundreds of thousands of dollars. It means that women are more dependent on men, on social security, but because they are taking time out of the workforce, their benefits may not be as high. It is why we need policies that we know help to keep women stay connected to the workforce. We know when newmonts take paper leave, they are more likely to come back to work, earn higher wages over time, and come back to the same employer would save them and training costs. And it allows for women and men to save for retirement and be paying into the tax system, so we all have more to benefit. Winwin. Host before we go back to calls, i want to give your chance, vicki shabo, to respond to the last point on immigration. Guest one of the critical things we need to do, if we are going to create more eldercare jobs where there are often lowpaying jobs with few protections. We cant just create a series of new workers who do not have wages or benefits for protection, because then we end up with more reliant on the social safety net and more and equality rather than less. We need to raise wages for everyone and protections to allow for people to be responsible to take individual responsibility. We need to create a society that is working for everybody and not just a few. Host john is calling from poughkeepsie, new york. Caller iwatch these lawyers organizations that are greatly funded. When they come up with their conclusions, they seem like predrawn conclusions, it is easy to take numbers and twist and turn them, but there has been discrepancy and pay and our society for years. It is not something that was planned. To think the you will going correct all the inequalities in our society, it is never going to happen. To say that men to pit men and women against one another, i dont understand. It seems like there is anger and hatred. That is the bottom line here. It doesnt seem like youre trying to solve the problem and make so