Over the past month, the Republican party's woman problem has come to the fore. And justifiably so: the party doesn't take too kindly to the needs and rights of women – or to basic reproductive science – and it's weighing on Mitt Romney's candidacy.

But party leaders' backward ideas aren't limited to controlling women's bodies; they also extend to controlling paychecks. With equal pay activist Lilly Ledbetter helping kick off the Democratic National Convention this week, it's time voters focused more on this equally important front in the Republican war on women.

Nearly 50 years after the passage of the Equal Pay Act – the civil rights-era law requiring that employers pay women the same as men for performing the same work – women are still losing out. American women who work full-time, year-round are paid only 77 cents for every dollar paid to their male counterparts. The average college-educated man's annual salary maxes out at age 48 at $95,000, whereas the average college-educated woman's does so at $60,000, at age 39.

What do Republican party leaders propose we do about this persistent pay gap: a disparity that's unfair on its face and that costs American families thousands of dollars every year? Nothing.

Take the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, which makes it easier for women to challenge unequal pay by allowing them more time to file lawsuits against their employers. The act is named after aforementioned Lilly Ledbetter, a former Goodyear Tire manager who sued after finding out she was paid about $13,000 less per year than male colleagues doing the same work. Romney has been characteristically unclear on his stance on the law, but running-mate Paul Ryan voted against the bill in 2009, along with more than 200 other Republican members of Congress.

In June, Republicans united to block the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would allow for punitive damages for pay discrimination and bar companies from retaliating against workers who inquire about pay disparities or discuss their pay with co-workers. You'd think such a libertarian ideal – protecting free speech – would be right up Paul Ryan's alley. But according to the Republican mentality, it seems the right to free speech only counts when it comes to corporate donors and fertilized eggs.

Republican leaders aren't just opposed to explicitly pay-oriented policies; they also don't want to allow women with deflated paychecks to access more affordable healthcare. Romney and Ryan want to repeal Obama's healthcare law, which guarantees annual exams for women and mammograms for those over 40 at no additional cost. Ryan also voted to defund Planned Parenthood four times, and his budget would eliminate funding for access to birth control, and STD and cancer screenings, for low-income families.

It's true that the equal pay laws we already have on the books – the Equal Pay Act, the Ledbetter Act and Title VII protections – are solid. But considering the size and persistence of the pay gap, it's clear that existing laws need to be strengthened and enforced, and more protections are needed for those who speak up about basic workplace fairness.

Still, Republicans prefer to do nothing.

Especially in a down economy, employees are afraid to point out problems at work for fear of being fired or otherwise retaliated against. In many workplaces, discussing pay is taboo; in some, it's grounds for termination.

Employees' reticence to assert their rights likely explains why there were fewer cases charging sex-based wage discrimination last year than the year before the Ledbetter Act was signed, and why the wage gap was slightly wider in 2010 than it was in 2007. Obama's EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) has also brought just six discrimination cases from 2009 to 2011 – one third the number it handled between 2006 and 2008.

Distressingly, the gender pay disparity has barely budged in more than a decade, according to Bloomberg BusinessWeek. It was about 40 cents to the dollar in the early 1960s, and narrowed quickly in the 1980s and early 90s. But it has shrunk by only four cents since 1994, and less than one cent since 2005, even as younger women caught up with and surpassed men in education.

Republican leaders and their backers in the US Chamber of Commerce claim that laws like the Paycheck Fairness Act would lead to "frivolous" lawsuits. But it's the job of the courts, not lobbyists, to decide which lawsuits should be allowed to move forward. Republicans also claim that Democrats were using the act as an election-year ploy to appeal to women. That's not much of an argument: if political opportunism results in better policy platforms and stronger laws, I'm all for it.

Of course, the pay gap has a number of causes, and a single new law can't correct them overnight. Women are paid less because of discrimination by employers, because of the fact that women dominate lower-paying "pink collar" fields like education, caregiving and social service, and because of a lack of protections for women who take time off to give birth and care for a child.

But entrenched problems call for creative solutions. Protecting workers who speak up about pay is one of them, and opening the floodgates to this kind of information-sharing would accelerate progress. Why not also require that employers disclose pay scales to bring transparency to compensation – which is too often based on biased or arbitrary decisions?

The Republican party will have none of it. But as its candidates remain wilfully blind to pay disparities and possible solutions, they're creating a political gender gap that not even Ann Romney's love can close.