BTW the same could be said of McCain-Palin: they speak of gas-tax-holidays and windfall-profit taxes in the same breath as if it was the most natural thing to do.

http://www.bls.gov/cps/minwage2005tbls.htm

The point I was trying to make was that when you parse the numbers, even though most min. wage workers are women, there are VERY few women trying to raise a family at a full time job at mininum wage. If you look at all the numbers, yes, most are teenagers. 29% are women over 25. And of those, the vast majority fit into the categories I described. I screwed up my wording, because I don't know how many are mothers. For instance, 60% of all min. wage workers are in food service, where their total income will almost certainly be much higher than the stated wage, and 60% are less than 25 hours per week or varying hours, and half of the over 25 set have a spouse present. So, just factoring that in, you're down to something like 2% of min. wage workers being unmarried women over 25 who aren't earning tips and are anywhere near full time. That's something like 40,000 people nationwide, just by factoring in those few details. Once you factor in all these things, you're left with a very small number of women who could possibly be working min. wage full time trying to raise a family.
The number is so small, that I would doubt that the anecdotes we hear from the candidates about min. wage earners finding them on the campaign trail & telling them their hard luck stories are true at all. Even if the candidates weren't known to tell a tall tale when it suited them, statistically, it would be hard to find the people they are describing even if you were looking for them.

P.S. Methinks (please accept this compliment with good humour–as I am sure you will), but you argue like a man–please keep swinging.

I'm not a "he". I'm a "she", thus I tend to hang out with women a lot. I've brought up minimum wage with women and they've mostly shrugged their shoulders. This happened even when they were low skilled women – probably because they were trying to figure out how to make more money regardless of what the minimum wage was or because they were teenagers just making spending money. Again, anecdotal.

The fact that the majority of minimum wage earners are women doesn't necessarily mean that minimum wage is a big issue for them.

Sorry, I can't help support the moaning about income "inequality" between men and women. Instead of wasting time whining about it, I just figured out how to make more money. Seemed like the logical solution.

Imagine breaking down every issue on the basis of race and sex. I guess if you are a Democrat you can not only imagine it you actually live and breath racial and gender segregation.

16.6% of minimum wage workers are married women.

Still want to stick with your assertion about minimum wage workers being middle class women working part time?

I can not find any data supporting that assertion.

I was about to fall in line with the "perception" argument, that women seem to think it is an issue therefore it is.

But no. Show me polling data where minimum-wage shows up as one of the top five issues for women. Open-ended question, not ranked as one of six, thank you.

You won't. Income equity will be big, minimum wage will not.

Abortion.
Health care.
Child care.
Income equity.
Economy.
Crime.

I would wager that ALL of the above would beat out minimum wage, by a long shot.

Last year there were 648,000 male minimum wage employees and 1,234,000 female minimum wage workers.

The share of women employeed at the minimum wage is almost double that of men.

Across the board even when adjusted for women dropping out of the labor force to have and raise children women's wages are significantly below that of men.

Why am I not surprised that methings thinks he has never met a woman for whom it was an important issue. Of all the women you have ever met how many have you discussed the minimum wage with — 0.001%?

As an anecdote, I've never met a woman for whom it was an important issue.

I know a lot of professors and all of them listen to NP(S)R. It seems to be an obligation. I'm starting to think you can't obtain tenure unless you can prove that you listen to public radio.

I was thinking the same thing. I would imagine even the question was something like, "Will this choice give McCain a boost with women voters?"

http://www.usnews.com/blogs/risky-business/2008/8/29/sarah-palin-just-how-pro-small-business-is-she.html

b) I thought McCain picked Michael Palin…?

Perhaps women, on the whole, show more interest in the issue of the minimum wage than men do. I don't know if they do, I'm merely offering up the possibility that they do, and if so, that this is how Ms. Lake meant it.