Many of Michigan's top female politicians visited with three original Rosie the Riveter's today at the Yankee Air Museum. They shared a message of hard work and a desire for equality.
"You'd work all day long, you went home and then you could go out and go anywhere you wanted to. You could go to the restaurant, I always went and got me a milkshake," that's Loraine Osborne, a Rosie the Riveter, describing her life in the Willow Run Bomber Plant during World War Two. She says all women need to help each other and pull together or she's afraid of what the future holds.
U-S Senator Debbie Stabenow says seven decades after women helped win the war too many are still denied equal pay for equal work. Stabenow says the pay gap has long term consequences for women and their families. "Fair pay establishes what you get in a pension. It establishes what you get in social security, so if you don't have equal opportunity, if you're not being paid comparably it goes with you your entire life," Stabenow says.
According to the U-S Census Bureau women in Michigan average 75 cents for every dollar men earn, which places the state 41st in terms of the gender pay gap.
The result of this gap, according to Democratic candidate for the 12th U-S House seat Debbie Dingell, is more women live in poverty than men.
Like 89.1 WEMU on Facebook and follow us on Twitter— Andrew Cluley is the Ann Arbor beat reporter, and anchor for 89.1 WEMU News. Contact him at734.487.3363 or email him acluley@emich.edu.
