Women's issues get a boost in NM
Richardson appoints Martha Burk as women's affairs adviser
Pay equity for women and child care issues got a leg up this week with Gov. Bill Richardson's appointment of Dr. Martha Burk as his women's affairs adviser.
Burk, who served with Lt. Gov. Diane Denish as national co-chair of Women for Richardson in Richardson’s presidential campaign, has served as an adviser to the governor on women's issues, but the appointment formalizes that role for Burk beyond Richardson's presidential campaign.
During that campaign, Burk served as Richardson's women's issues adviser and authored the Governor’s Women’s Policy Platform.
In announcing the appointment, Richardson said:
“I’m not looking for more reports that will simply highlight what we already know – that many women are not getting a fair shake when it comes to employment and pay equity. That’s why I tapped Dr. Burk for this role, because she knows these issues perhaps better than anyone and she is prepared, like me, to take bold action."
In April, Burk and Denish called on the governor to revisit the recommendations of a 2003 New Mexico Pay Equity Task Force report and repair the wage gaps that persist in the state. Richardson said he was amenable to doing just that.
At the same time, they released a report by the Southwest Women's Law Center that found more than half of the women working full time in 29 of 33 New Mexico counties earn so little they are eligible for food stamps and child care assistance.
The governor said he would also rely on Burk to help him convince the Legislature to double the New Mexico child day care credit, saying it would help more than 11,000 working families who pay more than $5,000 a year on child care.
Richardson's attention to pay equity contrasts starkly with the dismissal of the issue in recent weeks by elected officials in the spotlight on the other side of the party aisle, notably Republican presidential candidate John McCain and Rep. Steve Pearce, R-N.M., who is running for U.S. Senate.
In a telling YouTube video posted with a comment on the New Mexico Independent story "Aiming for Women", McCain tells a 14-year-old girl he agreed with the U.S. Supreme Court decision last year that left women no recourse in addressing unequal pay in the workforce unless they file a lawsuit within 180 days of their first discriminatory paycheck.
As the Lily Ledbetter case illustrated, most women are unaware or unable to prove they are being paid less than men until they have been on a job much longer.
In responding to the girl's question, McCain was roundly applauded for saying he would have opposed the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act because he did not see it as an equal opportunity issue, but saw it as a means to "help trial lawyers and others in that profession."
While McCain was absent for the vote he said he would have made, Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., did vote to kill action on the federal Fair Pay Act that would have loosened the restrictive time restraints.
Pearce, during an April 25 debate in Los Alamos, said he opposed Congress acting on the issue of pay equity, and, according to a report by Albuquerque Journal reporter Jeff Jones gave this explanation:
"We're entering a time when, if women will stand their ground, we're so short of employees coming up, that they will get their just rewards -- because we need the people."
Denish commented at the time that "we've needed people in the workplace for 50 years" and that Pearce was obviously "out of touch" on the issue. Pearce did not respond to requests by Jones for clarification of his comments.
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