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USA Today: Women's Equality Day: How equal are women in 2016?

August 27, 2016

In many ways, it’s great to be a woman living in 2016. Today, more women are educated, celebrated and making change. In Rio, U.S. women outpaced men, taking home more Olympic medals than their male counterparts— 61 to be exact. A woman is even running for president.

Today, 104 women hold seats in U.S. Congress.

When Rep. Marcy Kaptur first came to Congress in 1983, the Ohio Democrat was one of only 24 women in the House and Senate. In 2013, a record 98 women — 20 in the Senate and 78 in the House — dramatically raised that number in the 113th Congress.

"Women bring a breadth of experience that will be important to the work of every committee," said Kaptur during that monumental year. "They bring life experience and perceptions that have been missing here. I hope the operations of Congress will change and be more productive and less contentious."

Not only are women holding more positions of power, but in some cases they are being well paid.

This year, we saw Amazon go against the norm when the company said a review of its entire U.S. staff, including warehouse workers, found that women’s compensation in 2015 was 99.9% of men’s in equivalent jobs. Further, minorities make 100.1% of what white workers earn, Amazon said.

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