Where Carly Fiorina Stands On Issues That Are Important To Women
On Monday, former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina joined the growing roster of Republicans running for President in 2016, and is aiming to stand out from the crowd by positioning herself as the conservative alternative to Hillary Clinton.
“If Hillary Clinton were to face a female nominee, there are a whole
set of things that she won’t be able to talk about,” Fiorina told reporters
mid-April. “She won’t be able to talk about being the first woman
president. She won’t be able to talk about a war on women without being
challenged. She won’t be able to play the gender card.”
She later told Bloomberg
that her candidacy “renders the Democratic ‘war on women’ baloney sort
of neutral. It will be definitely harder for her to run against a
woman. … because the political rhetoric that she talks about will be far
more difficult for her to make credible.”
Yet the so-called “War on Women” advocates cite is about the policies pushed by the Republican Party just as much as the sexist tone
of many of its politicians and pundits. And on several key policy
questions, Fiorina has staked out positions out of line with the
majority of women voters.
Minimum Wage
By some estimates, nearly two-thirds of minimum wage workers and three-quarters of low-wage workers are women. A raise in the federal minimum wage would benefit millions of working women and help close the persistent gender pay gap, and a vast majority — 80 percent — of women favor such a pay hike.
Yet Fiorina has repeatedly opposed a raise. “The sad truth is that
raising the minimum wage will hurt those who are looking for entry-level
jobs,” she said during a panel hosted, ironically, by the Clinton Foundation.
At this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), Fiorina argued again against a minimum wage hike by arguing — incorrectly — that 62 percent of minimum wage workers are still in high school, when the real number is closer to a third.
Birth Control
In speeches and appearances this year leading up to her campaign announcement, Fiorina has strongly opposed access to abortion and written off increasing restrictions on access to birth control. At CPAC, she told the crowd that the Supreme Court ruling
last year that allowed employers to deny insurance coverage for
contraception did not negatively impact women, despite evidence that the
decision could severely impact the ability of low-income women workers to afford the reproductive health care they need. More than two-thirds
of polled women voters, and a majority of Catholics, disagree with
Fiorina, and say private corporations should not be allowed to deny
their workers insurance that covers birth control.
Equal Pay
Though Fiorina has acknowledged the existence
of the gender pay gap, she lays the blame for it on “unions, government
bureaucracies, the very constituencies that Hillary Clinton and the
Democratic Party represent” and opposes the passage of legislation like
the Paycheck Fairness Act that would make it easier for women to discover and challenge pay discrimination.
She’s written that the legislation “would hurt female employees,” yet studies have shown that closing the gender pay gap would cut the poverty rate in half for working women.
Fiorina’s first political race ended in a decisive loss
to long-time California Senator Barbara Boxer in 2010 — a year in which
Republicans across the country swept Democrats out of office. Boxer’s
campaign triumphed, according to the LA Times, by portraying Fiorina as “a heartless corporate titan who had laid off workers and shipped jobs abroad.” A similar characterization
of Mitt Romney, another wealthy CEO who oversaw layoffs and
outsourcing, help tank his bid for the White House in 2012, raising
questions about Fiorina’s prospects in 2016.
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