The leader of a recently-launched politically action committee aimed at female voters in Texas said this week that equal pay lays were not “practical” because women were “extremely busy.”

During a Sunday interview with WFAA’s Inside Texas Politics, host Jason Whitely told RedState Women Executive Editor Cari Christman that Democrats had accused Republicans of “hitting the panic button” and launching the PAC in the final months before the 2014 elections after gubernatorial candidate Greg Abbott was criticized for campaigning with Ted Nugent.

ADVERTISEMENT

Whitely also pointed out that Abbott had recently said that Texas did not need new laws to protect women against pay discrimination.

“We believe that Texas women want and deserve equal pay,” Christman admitted. “But honestly, Jason, we don’t believe the Lilly Ledbetter Act is what’s going to solve that problem for women. We believe that women want real-world solutions to this problem, not more rhetoric.”

But after Whitely asked Christman to provide a better solution for equal pay, the PAC leader stumbled with some awkward rhetoric of her own.

“If you look at it, women are… extremely busy, we lead busy lives,” she explained. “And times are extremely busy. It’s just — it’s a busy cycle for women, and we’ve got a lot to juggle.”

“And so when we look at this issue, we think, what’s practical?” Christman continued. “And we want more access to jobs. And we want to be able to go to get a higher education degree at the same time we’re working or raising a family. That’s common sense. And we believe that real-world solution is a more practical way to approach the problem.”

ADVERTISEMENT

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis, whose campaign first flagged Christman’s comments, said in a statement that the “out-of-touch comments from a top Greg Abbott ally are no surprise given that Abbott fought against equal pay for equal work in the courtroom.”

“Here’s a newsflash for Greg Abbott: Women aren’t too ‘busy’ to fight for economic fairness for all hardworking Texans and they aren’t too ‘busy’ to reject his business as usual opposition to equal pay legislation at the polls next November,” the statement said.

Watch the video below from WFAA, broadcast March 16, 2014.