“Restoring opportunity for all has to be our priority, making sure the economy rewards hard work for every single American. Because when women succeed, America succeeds,” Obama said in a speech to mark the signing of the order. 
 
 “We are going to work to make sure that our daughters have the same chance to pursue their dreams as our sons,” he added, urging businesses and the government to do more to hire women and achieve gender equality in a bid to lift families out of poverty and allocate more resources to child care, college tuition and retirement savings. 
 
 “We don’t have second-class citizens in this country,” Obama said. 
 
 Tuesday’s signing coincides with National Equal Pay Day, serving as a reminder that more than 50 years after the Equal Pay Act was made law, women still earn less then men. On average, women earn only about 77 cents on the dollar compared with men. African-American women and Latinas take home even less, just 64 cents and 54 cents, respectively, for every dollar earned by white men, according to the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC). Obama called the numbers “embarrassing,” and “wrong.” 
 
 “It is good to move the ball forward on improving our equal pay policies,” Fatima Graves, NWLC vice president for education and employment, told Al Jazeera. “It’s important because right now workers are left in the dark about wage disparity information.” 
 
 “Penalizing pay secrecy is an important step that sends a strong message,” she said. But, Graves added, Obama’s order, which affects only federal contractors and does nothing to protect female employees in the private sector, “doesn’t complete the job.” 
 
 “What we really need is for Congress to pass the Fair Paycheck Act which would get at all workers,” she said. 
 
 A Senate vote on that act, slated for Tuesday, would extend the order’s requirements to most other employers. However, the bill has already failed to pass twice, despite evidence that pay transparency can reduce the gender wage gap. In the federal government, for example, where pay rates are publicly available, the gender wage gap is much smaller than in the private sector, according to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. ||||| President Obama will take two executive actions Tuesday aimed at narrowing the wage gap between men and women, forcing federal contractors to let their workers discuss their earnings with one another and to disclose more information about what their employees earn. 
 
 The push by Obama, who also is commemorating Tuesday as “National Equal Pay Day,” is part of a broader effort by Democrats to increase turnout among female voters during the 2014 midterm elections, which party strategists consider critical to limiting Republican gains this fall. 
 
 One of the new measures is an executive order prohibiting federal contractors from retaliating against workers who discuss their salaries with one another. The other is a presidential memorandum ordering new rules for contractors to file data with the federal government showing how they compensate employees, including by sex and race. 
 
 White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett said Monday that the two policies aim to address the “pay secrecy” that often keeps workers from seeking more equitable compensation. 
 
 “Unfortunately, pay inequity is a real and persistent problem that continues to shortchange women, their families and our economy as a whole,” she told reporters in a conference call. 
 
 Senate Democrats are hoping paycheck policy will be a smart play by focusing attention on the fight for equal pay. However, opponents say it's less about the wage gap and more about politics. (Pamela Kirkland/The Washington Post) 
 
 The first bill that Obama signed into law in 2009 was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which gave employees more time to file discrimination claims. Jarrett said the administration is disappointed that Republicans in Congress have opposed another bill, the Paycheck Fairness Act, which includes reforms like the ones that Obama is applying to federal contractors. 
 
 But Kirsten Kukowski, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, wrote in an e-mail that the Paycheck Fairness Act is “a desperate political ploy and Democrats are cynically betting that Americans aren’t smart enough to know better.” 
 
 Kukowski said the proposal “cuts flexibility in the workplace for working moms and ends merit pay that rewards good work — the very things that are important to us.” 
 
 Obama and his aides often say that women earn 77 cents for every dollar men earn, which compares the annual earnings of women working full-time jobs over the course of a year with the earnings of men working the same amount of time. Some academics argue that the gap between the sexes is smaller if you account for a number of variables, including an employee’s length of time in the workforce, specific occupation and education level. 
 
 Even the most conservative estimates, however, suggest that women earn 5 to 12 percent less for doing similar jobs as men. 
 
 “I don’t think there’s a better figure,” said Betsey Stevenson, a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, who also spoke to reporters on the conference call with Jarrett. “What we do know is there are more things we can do to close that gap.” 
 
 Fatima Goss Graves, vice president for education and employment at the National Women’s Law Center, said in an interview that the new requirements could spur companies to take voluntary measures to equalize salaries. 
 
 View Graphic Women in the United States earn about 81 cents for every dollar that a man earns. 
 
 “One of the problems in the law is pay discrimination goes undetected,” she said, “This is going to put employers in a place where they’re going to take the right steps, and look for pay disparities and correct them immediately.” 
 
 One of the reasons women continue to earn less than men on average is that they work in lower-paying fields, Goss Graves said. Roughly two-thirds of all workers who were paid minimum wage or less in 2013 were female, she added. 
 
 “A big part of the wage gap stems from the fact that women-dominated jobs simply pay less,” she said. 
 
 The White House itself is not immune to inequalities: An analysis by the conservative American Enterprise Institute found that the median salary for female White House staffers was 12 percent lower than that for male staffers. 
 
 White House press secretary Jay Carney said Monday that the number “is better than the national average” and said women who work the same jobs as men at the White House are paid the same. He said the two deputy chiefs of staff at the White House — one man and one woman — earn the same salary, while more than half of 16 department heads are women. 
 
 “What I can tell you is that we have as an institution here have aggressively addressed this challenge,” he said. 
 
 Mark Perry, an economics professor at the University of Michigan at Flint who wrote the AEI study, said the wage gap might reflect women and men having different roles within the White House, rather than discrimination. 
 
 A senior administration official said the White House makes it a priority to hire women and diverse talent at all levels. 
 
 “While we still have work to do, we believe that our focus on hiring more young talent, especially women, to work in the White House is the right thing to do to build a strong and diverse staff that can advance in this and future administrations,” said the official who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss personnel matters. 
 
 “We have also made an effort to advance women through the ranks within the White House, as shown by the number of women in senior positions whom have been promoted from within,” the official said. ||||| Tomorrow, on Equal Pay Day, President Obama will designate a new national monument at a historic location in Washington, D.C., to honor the movement for women’s equality. The new Belmont-Paul Women’s Equality National Monument will protect the iconic house that has served as the headquarters for the National Woman’s Party since 1929. From this house, known in recent years as the Sewall-Belmont House, members of the Party led the movement for women’s equality, authoring more than 600 pieces of federal, state and local legislation in support of equal rights. 
 
 Tomorrow’s designation will permanently protect one of the oldest standing houses near the U.S. Capitol and help preserve an extensive archival collection that documents the history, strategies, tactics and accomplishments of the movement to secure women’s suffrage and equal rights in the United States and across the globe. 
 
 The new monument is named for former Party president, activist and suffragist Alva Belmont, who was a major benefactor of the National Woman's Party, and Alice Paul, who founded the Party and was the chief strategist and leader in the Party’s ongoing fight for women’s political, social, and economic equality. 
 
 After playing an instrumental role in the passage and ratification of the 19th Amendment guaranteeing women’s suffrage, Paul led the Party’s advocacy work from the house, including drafting updated Equal Rights Amendment text, writing provisions that were later included in the Civil Rights Act to prevent discrimination on the basis of gender, and working to get women’s equality language incorporated in the U.N. Charter. A fierce advocate for women’s equality her entire life, Paul died in 1977 at the age of ninety-two. 
 
 Efforts to protect the site date back to the early 1970s, and more recent proposals to include the site in the National Park System have garnered Congressional support – including bipartisan legislation introduced by Senator Mikulski – as well as strong support from local elected officials, community leaders, women’s organizations, conservation groups and historians. The National Park Foundation will announce that David Rubenstein is contributing $1 million dollars to support the site and address immediate restoration needs. 
 
 In 1997, the National Woman’s Party became an educational organization and today, seeks to educate the public about the ongoing women’s rights equality movement. 
 
 In addition to protecting more land and water than any President in history – more than 265 million acres – President Obama has sought to protect places that are diverse, culturally and historically significant, and that reflect the story of all Americans. By honoring the history and accomplishments of the movement for women’s equality, tomorrow’s designation will build on this effort towards a more inclusive National Park System and tell the story of women’s fight for equality for generations to come. Our national parks and other protected sites that represent America’s diverse history and culture will continue to be an important priority for the Administration as the country celebrates the National Park Service Centennial this year. 
 
 About Equal Pay Day 
 
 Tomorrow we observe Equal Pay Day – the date in the current year that represents the extra days a typical woman working full-time would have to work just to make the same as a typical man did in the previous year. Since taking office, President Obama has made equal pay a top priority and has taken a number of steps to fight for pay equity. In addition to signing his first piece of legislation as President, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, President Obama has created the National Equal Pay Task Force, called on Congress to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act, issued an Executive Order prohibiting federal contractors from discriminating against employees who discuss or inquire about their compensation, and worked with the Department of Labor and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to better target enforcement of equal pay laws though enhanced employer reporting of pay data. 
 
 To highlight key gender equality issues and set the agenda for the future, next month, the White House will host a Summit on “The United State of Women” together with the Department of State, the Department of Labor, the Aspen Institute, and Civic Nation. The summit will create an opportunity to mark the progress made by and for women and girls domestically and internationally over the course of this Administration and to discuss solutions to the challenges they still face. The Summit is being held with additional cooperation from Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women, the Tory Burch Foundation and the Ford Foundation. 
 
 Building on Steps to Help Women in the Workforce and Working Families 
 
 President Obama has taken a number of actions to combat the pay gap, as well as other issues that affect women in the workforce, including: 
 
 Working with the Department of Labor and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in January 2016 to publish a proposal to annually collect summary pay data by gender, race, and ethnicity from businesses with 100 or more employees, potentially covering over 63 million employees. This step will help focus public enforcement of our equal pay laws and provide better insight into discriminatory pay practices across industries and occupations. The Council of Economic Advisers also released an issue brief , “The Gender Pay Gap on the Anniversary of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act,” that explores the state of the gender wage gap, the factors that influence it, and policies put forward by this Administration that can help address it. 
 
 “The Gender Pay Gap on the Anniversary of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act,” that explores the state of the gender wage gap, the factors that influence it, and policies put forward by this Administration that can help address it. Signing a Presidential Memorandum in May 2013 directing the Office of Personnel Management to develop a government-wide strategy to address the gender pay gap in the federal workforce, leading to a report in April 2014 and new guidance in July 2015—which cautioned against required reliance on a candidate’s existing salary to set pay, as it can potentially adversely affect women who may have taken time off from their careers or propagate gaps due to discriminatory pay practices by previous employers. 
 
 Issuing an Executive Order in April 2014 and publishing a Department of Labor rule in September 2015 prohibiting federal contractors from discriminating against employees who discuss or inquire about their compensation. 
 
 Hosting the first-ever White House Summit on Working Families in June 2014, highlighting the issues that women and families face, setting the agenda for a 21st century workplace, and announcing of a number of steps to help working families thrive. 
 
 Signing a Presidential Memorandum in January 2015 directing federal agencies to advance six weeks of paid sick leave to federal employees with new children, calling on Congress to grant another six weeks of paid leave for federal employees, and calling on Congress to pass legislation that gives all American families access to paid family and medical leave. 
 
 Issuing an Executive Order in September 2015 requiring federal contractors to provide employees working on federal contracts up to seven paid sick days each year—and urging Congress, states, cities, and other businesses to do the same. 
 
 Publishing a proposed Department of Labor rule in June 2015 updating outdated overtime regulations, which, if finalized, would expand overtime pay protections for nearly 5 million Americans, promoting higher take home pay, and allowing workers to better balance their work and family obligations. 
 
 Issuing an Executive Order in February 2014 requiring federal contractors to raise their minimum wage to $10.10 an hour and lift the tipped minimum wage (which disproportionately impacts women)—and urging Congress, states, cities, and businesses to do the same. 
 
 Issuing an Executive Order in July 2014 and publishing a Department of Labor rule in December 2014 prohibiting federal contractors from discriminating in employment on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. 
 
 Directing the Office of Personnel Management and federal agencies to enhance workplace flexibility for federal employees to the maximum extent practicable, including enshrining a right to request flexible work arrangements. 
 
 Calling on Congress to pass the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, which would require employers to make reasonable accommodations to workers who have limitations from pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions (unless it would impose an undue hardship on the employer). The legislation would also prohibit employers from forcing pregnant employees to take paid or unpaid leave if a reasonable accommodation would allow them to work. 
 
 Publishing a proposed Department of Labor rule that, if finalized, would update its sex discrimination guidelines for federal contractors for the first time since 1978, to align with current law and address barriers to equal opportunity and pay, such as pay discrimination, sexual harassment, hostile work environments, a lack of workplace accommodations for pregnant women, and gender identity and family caregiving discrimination. 
 
 Increasing investments to expand access to high-quality early care and education, including efforts under the Race to the Top-Early Learning Challenge program, Preschool Development Grants, Head Start and Early Head Start, and a landmark proposal that helps all eligible working families with young children afford high-quality child care. 
 
 Expanding access for women to higher-paying jobs through a proposed rule updating equal employment opportunity requirements in registered apprenticeships and through a Mega-Construction Projects (MCP) Initiative at the Department of Labor. 
 
 Additionally, the President’s Council of Economic Advisers has continued to spotlight the pay gap and other challenges women face in the workforce as well as policy solutions proposed by the Administration to address these persistent challenges. Those materials include:
– On National Equal Pay Day, President Obama is taking action to fight the gender wage gap among federal contractors. Today, he signed an executive order requiring the companies to publish their wage data by gender and race, thus pushing them to adhere to laws on equal pay, al Jazeera America reports."Penalizing pay secrecy is an important step that sends a strong message," says a VP for the National Women's Law Center. The move doesn't apply to private companies, though a Senate vote today could help change that. But the bill in question has twice failed to get through Congress, al Jazeera notes. Meanwhile, a second executive order today bars federal contractors from retaliating against workers who exchange information on their salaries, the Washington Post notes. "Pay inequity is a real and persistent problem that continues to shortchange women, their families, and our economy as a whole," says Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett.