The only way to ensure equality for women is to clearly declare it in our Constitution.

As more women have gone into the workforce, they find it harder to be a good mother and a good worker. When I go into the office, I always feel guilty. I'm thinking about the children. When I'm at home, I'm thinking about my work. So you're always under tremendous pressure. Women feel very stressed. They feel like they're working harder and harder and harder. And society is not really helping them.

In America, we have long stood by the principle that the protections of the law are not meant just for some.

In my research, I found that since 1979, women have lost the equivalent to one night's sleep due to the pressures of balancing work and family. And as more women have gone into the work force because they have to, and when you discriminate against a woman's pay you discriminate against her children or her husband or her significant other in terms of what the family income is.

We need a mayor who knows how to balance a budget, who understands the urgency of delivering all the services that a great city needs, who understand the need of working families.

Healthy moms mean healthy families. When my Republican colleagues held a hearing about birth control and refused to include a single woman on the first panel as a witness, I asked, "Where are the women?"

I was proud to be an original cosponsor of the Violence Against Women Act when Congress passed it in 1994, and was proud to support the previous renewals in 2000 and 2005. These bills always enjoyed large, bipartisan support.