A Letter to Mitt Romney on Women and Pay Equality

Dear Mitt Romney,

I never want to be allocated to the "binders full of women," thank you very much. I do not want my gender, my race, my ethnicity, my martital status, my sexuality, etc. to be considered when I apply for any position. However, I am not against scholarships, awards, and other incentives set aside specifically for women and minorities in order to get underrepresented groups into certain fields and make them want to stay there.

That said, I want to be in the candidate binders, filled with men and women, whites, blacks, Filipinos, Mexicans, Italians, Germans, Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Indians, Native Americans, Cubans, the physically disabled, veterans, single parents, gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transgender people etc. I want the quality of our work to decide who gets a position, certainly not an accident of birth, nor a living condition or life stage.

In the workplace, some individuals may need some special accommodations. But to assume all working mothers need to get home to make dinner for their children, clean the house, and take their children to soccer is, frankly, a little archaic. While I think you meant well in your discussion of women in the work place, Gov. Romney, you depicted patriarchy instead of equality.

Not to mention, you never actually addressed fair pay for women, just fair employment opportunities for women. These are not one and the same. If I do the same work as a man and all the accommodation I require is maternity leave instead of paternity leave, and maybe someone to walk me out to my car every once and a while if I stay at the office very late, how does that justify paying me less for the work I do? It doesn't. In many American households, women are the breadwinners. We deserve to be paid as the breadwinner like men were in the mid-twentieth century, and the President realizes that, one of many reasons I am reelecting Pres. Obama in 2012.

Sincerely,
RecoveringChristian