Four years ago today President Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, with Lilly Ledbetter, who suffered 20 years of pay discrimination while doing the same work as men at her Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. factory, looking on.

Now, she is urging people to call on Congress to pass the recently reintroduced Paycheck Fairness Act, calling it “the next step.”

Today, women make just 77 cents for every dollar made by a man for equal work, about $434,000 over their careers. Sponsors of the reintroduced Paycheck Fairness Act, Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), say the proposed bill will help close that gap. The pair has introduced the bill several times in recent years, but Republicans have been able to block action on the bill, most recently last summer with a Senate filibuster.

Ninety-two years ago yesterday, U.S. women won the right to vote.

The Indiana State AFL-CIO mentioned in an e-mail yesterday, Rose Schneiderman, who headed the Women’s Trade Union League, explained in 1918:

We want to tell our Senators that the working women of our State demand the vote as an economic necessity. We need it because we are workers and because the workers are the ones that have to carry civilization on their backs.

The anniversary is a good time to reflect on how women would fare under a Romney-Ryan administration.

On the day after Missouri Republican U.S. Senate candidate Todd Akin made some of the most ignorant and outrageous statements about women, pregnancy and so-called “legitimate rape,” MSNBC’s "NOW With Alex Wagner" explored how the debate over women’s issues is often done by men.

Wagner’s guests included U.S. Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y) and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), Massachusetts U.S. Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren and equal pay advocate Lilly Ledbetter.

In a 52-47 vote, the U.S. Senate blocked a vote on the Paycheck Fairness Act this afternoon. With 60 votes needed to proceed to a vote on the bill, Republicans succeeded in blocking pay equity for women for the second time. 

Today, as equal rights advocates mark Equal Pay Day to remind the nation that women are paid  just 80 cents for every dollar men earn, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) introduced the Fair Pay Act of 2011 that would ensure that employers provide equal pay for jobs that are equivalent in skill, effort, responsibility and working conditions.