Issue Position: Women's Rights

Issue Position

Equal Pay for Equal Work

It's amazing that Congress can't even agree on basic matters of common sense fairness and equality like equal pay for equal work. This is not just a women's issue. It's a family issue. We are all tired of hearing radical Republicans talk about family values when they don't actually focus on what's best for our families and communities. When women earn less than men, it makes it harder for our families to thrive.

Women's Health

Katherine will stand up to the extremist attacks on women's rights, and she will not allow far right Republicans to take away a woman's right to make her own health care decisions. Katherine will fight to defend women's access to family planning and birth control, and fight against radical Republican efforts to defund Planned Parenthood.

Domestic Violence

As a legislator, Katherine has been a leader on the issue of domestic violence. A former prosecutor, she knows the devastating effect domestic violence has on a family. Katherine has been a champion of victims' rights and secured important changes in our laws to support survivors.

Minimum Wage

At a time when corporate profits are at an all time high, one out of six workers in Massachusetts is a low-wage earner, making only $8-11 per hour. That means nearly half a million people work in low-paying jobs each day, scraping by to make ends meet.

Adjusted for inflation, the minimum wage is actually less than it was decades ago. The value of the wage for service employees who work for tips has fallen by 58% since 1968.

When Katherine was a waitress in 1985, the hourly wage was $2.00, but in 1999 the tipped minimum wage was frozen at $2.63 an hour, and it hasn't been changed since!

And because women are disproportionately concentrated in low-wage jobs, the minimum wage affects women and their children even more. It's time to raise the minimum wage.

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