Obama Kicks Off His Campaign Against the Gender Wage Gap

President Obama is headed to Orlando to start a national push to close that pesky gender wage gap and talk to the ladies about the economy. Hopefully someone requests subsidized tampons or free pad dispensers, you know, something useful.

The POTUS is using the income disparity to rally support for raising the federal minimum wage, which not everyone supports — hello, GOP. But the Obama administration says pushing the minimum wage up to $10.10 by 2016 would decrease the gender wage gap by 5 percent.

Starting at Florida’s Valencia College, which the White House has praised before for readying their students for the job market, the POTUS is scheduled to chat with students about “the state of the economy.” Orlando’s chat-and-chew will be followed by stops in Boston, Chicago, Denver, New York and San Francisco as the Obama administration focuses on women’s issues like, “raising the minimum wage, narrowing the pay disparity between men and women, and increasing the availability of affordable child care as well as early education programs,” reports USA Today.

And there’s more to this Obama administration lady party. Next week, there will be a STEM for Her roundtable in Washington, hosted by the National Women’s Business Council and Small Business Administration, to discuss recruiting more women into the science, technology, engineering and math fields. White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett even mentioned that the Obama administration is considering “acts of Congress” to get women into STEM. Hopefully this means the White House is serious.

A new White House economic report shows that while women are making gains in the workforce and education, we’re still slowed thanks to the gender wage gap. Most full-time female employees earn 77 cents to every dollar our male co-workers make. Hell, the wage gap is even skipping down the halls of the White House, where an American Enterprise Institute analysis of last year’s salaries found that 229 women workers earn a median of $65,000 per year while their 232 male counterparts pull in almost $75,000. Maybe the President should begin his epic adjustment at home first?

Scenarios like these are occurring despite data showing that women are often more educated than men. Last year, 25-34 year-old women were 25 percent more likely to be college graduates than their male peers. Womp.

With American working women accounting for 45% of family earnings, the wage gap can’t properly be described as a women’s issue, suggested Betsey Stevenson, a member of the Council of Economic Advisers. “There ability to earn a fair and equal wage is a family issue, not a women’s issue,” Stevenson said.