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.

You see we're a country that talks about family values. But we haven't passed anything to help family values since the Family and Medical Leave Act. And the Family and Medical Leave Act was one of the first things I voted on when I came to Congress. It was very thrilling to me, because when my first child was born, I was terrified of being fired. When my second child was born, I was a member of the city council, and in some ways it was easier to respond to 250 constituents than it was to respond to one employer.

I would say that the race of Hillary Clinton was very important to this country, because it showed that a woman could win the state, that a woman could raise money. I think that every woman is sitting a little taller, not only in our own country, but I think women around the world watch what's happening in the United States.

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.

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.

More women are working because they have to, that's what it takes to put the food on the table and pay the rent. And yet we have not changed our policies to support the family. The right wing goes to the floor, and they did when they were in power, and talk about family values. Well, where are they? Family values is support for child care. Family values is equal pay for equal work so that women are paid appropriately.

We're going to school for higher education in higher numbers, but the numbers still show we're not breaking though the glass ceiling. For every Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton there are millions of women stuck in cement on the floor that are not getting up.