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.

I believe very strongly in paid sick leave.

I think that changing stereotypes and attitudes, it takes time. As we progress and we have more women astronauts and more women in construction sites and everything else, then we're making progress. Discrimination is deeply embedded in our community, but we do have the tools to combat it.

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 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.

The proposal that men and women should be treated equally under the law is hardly a controversial concept.

The reports that Media Matters have done about sexism in our society and really the mainstream media called Hillary Clinton "castrating," they called her the B word, they called her all kinds of horrible things. And I think in a sense that it raised the awareness in our country, so that we can have a national discussion about it.