“So how dumb are we? Well, if we don’t vote some people who actually respect women into Congress soon, we just may be as dumb as those senators think.”

— my quote of choice from Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick in her article “How Dumb Are We?How long will women shoulder the blame for the pay gap?”, on the topic of Congress’s rejection of a bill that would have recognized each subsequent inequitable paycheck as an act of discrimination, rather than just the first one.

I guess the argument is that, although folks realize that womens’ salaries are artificially low because they are women, not remedying the situation is OK, since they didn’t instigate the initial discrimination. The discrepancy after that point can be argued as that individual receiving equitable percentage increases, but just not starting from as large a base. First job seekers, take note: your initial salary anywhere, but particularly for that first job, is one of the primary determiners of your salary trajectory for the remainder of your career. Take your second job as the job you really love; take your first job to set your salary benchmark, and make sure you negotiate for every additional penny you can get. That advice holds for everyone, but for women in particular. Make sure that you can justify any discrepancy LATER as years spent out of the workforce raising children, or sweatshop environments avoided. Just don’t let yourself be pigeon-holed as the woman who’ll cost you less just because she’s a woman and doesn’t know any better.