President Obama to Talk to BlogHer Bloggers About Equal Pay and More

On Wednesday afternoon, President Obama is hosting a town hall primarily with women who write for the site BlogHer to discuss issues like equal pay and the cost of childcare, pegged to Tax Day (helllllo April 15!) and Equal Pay Day.

The discussion will take place in Charlotte, North Carolina, where the president will “talk with working moms about the plan he laid out in his proposed budget to help folks trying to support their families,” as Valerie Jarrett wrote in a BlogHer blogpost. BlogHer (which is owned by SheKnows Media, which also owns StyleCaster and Daily Makeover, among other sites), was approached partially because of “the White House’s ongoing effort to reach targeted audiences through alternate social media platforms,” as the Washington Post notes (in an article interestingly titled “Obama journeys to the land of mommy bloggers”). Recent endeavors under that category include interviews with new media companies like BuzzFeed and Vice.

The event will be livestreamed at 2:35 ET (you can watch it above) and conversation will be moderated by BlogHer co-founder and SheKnows Chief Community Officer Lisa Stone, who wrote on the site:

At the Town Hall this Wednesday, I expect President Obama to share his opinions and the work he’s already done to close this gap: Signing the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act(January 2009), signing two executive actions to prohibit firing or retaliating against federal employees who discuss their compensation and launching a federal compensation survey (April 2014), and now supporting the Paycheck Fairness Act that Congress has failed to pass four times.

Questions and comments will also be taken via social media using the hashtags #ObamaTownHall and #womenslives.