I firmly believe that if you help a woman, then you educate a child, you help the family. Because women are very focused on health care and education and on the family. So if you help a woman, you help the family, you help the village, you help the country. And so empowering women is a very important part of moving, not just women forward, but the economy of the nation forward. Particularly in very substandard nations.

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?"

My idea is that we've worked so many years for equality, but the only area where we've achieved equality, with men, is in job loss. We are still 77 cents to the dollar.

If you ask around, it's pretty easy to find someone who has a bank account overdraft horror story to tell.

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

Because it's important. Laws can be reversed, Supreme Court decisions can be overturned, gender classifications can continue.

While men's rights are guaranteed by specific language in the Constitution, women's equal rights aren't mentioned.