CAROLYN MALONEY

Women deserve the same permanent rights and explicit protections given men in the Constitution.

We need a mayor who knows how to balance a budget, who understands the urgency of delivering all the services that a great city needs, who understand the need of working families.

I believe very strongly in paid sick leave.

If you ask around, it's pretty easy to find someone who has a bank account overdraft horror story to tell.

Nine out of ten adult Americans have a checking account. It's the most widely used financial services product in the United States.

While men's rights are guaranteed by specific language in the Constitution, women's equal rights aren't mentioned.

I was proud to be an original cosponsor of the Violence Against Women Act when Congress passed it in 1994, and was proud to support the previous renewals in 2000 and 2005. These bills always enjoyed large, bipartisan support.

In America, we have long stood by the principle that the protections of the law are not meant just for some.

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

We cannot ensure that women will be free of discrimination in the workplace and everywhere as long as women are not universally defended under our Constitution. As it stands now, the equal rights of women are subject to interpretation of law. That is a risk our mothers, sisters and daughters cannot afford.

The only way to ensure equality for women is to clearly declare it in our Constitution.

Why in the world is it not a felony to traffic and sell illegal guns in our country? This is an outrage.

When I started working, women were working at 59 cents to the dollar. We got a raise, but it's still unfair. We're still 16 percent of Congress, even though we're 51 percent of the population. We're a low percentage of our CEOs. We're a low percentage of boards and being part of boards.

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.

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 asked, "What do you think the most important advancement was for women in recent years?" And the majority, the item that polled the most, was Hillary Clinton's run for President. Can you believe that? Women saw that as a breakthrough in something very, very important. She didn't win. And I think another thing that her race did was it showed sexism in our society.

Usually women are the lynchpins of the family. They carry the brunt of the work at home and of being mothers and of taking care of the children. Not always. I have a wonderful husband, who is a great father and has helped tremendously at home. And I think that men are getting in touch and I think that the role that they have is so important, to be a good father and have a good career and be a good husband. But I think that as more and more women go into the workforce, you have to have more help at home and it becomes more of a sharing of responsibilities.

Because it's important. Laws can be reversed, Supreme Court decisions can be overturned, gender classifications can continue.

As more women have gone into the workforce, they find it harder to be a good mother and a good worker. When I go into the office, I always feel guilty. I'm thinking about the children. When I'm at home, I'm thinking about my work. So you're always under tremendous pressure. Women feel very stressed. They feel like they're working harder and harder and harder. And society is not really helping them.

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.

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.

I just remember when my first child was born I called the personnel office and I asked them about their leave policies. And they said, "Leave policies? Women just leave and they don't come back." And I said, "But I want to come back." They said, "We have no leave policy." And then they said, "Why don't you apply for disability?" Well, having a child is not a disability.

One of my mentors was Patricia Schroeder, and one night she came to me on the floor and she said to me, "Why are we sitting in Congress, when a lot of women would try to do it and couldn't? Why are we here and others aren't?" And I thought back and said it was because my father believed in me and she said the same thing, she said her father believed in her and thought she could do anything.

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.