Considering that McCain voted against equal pay for equal work in the past legislature, it is a little perplexing to imagine that he would have suddenly seen the light.
Well, I'm not a McCain fan so I'm not rushing to defend the man here. Two considerations, though.
One, it doesn't really matter whether
he, personally, is more or less old-fashioned. Given that he's, what?, 75 I'm sure he is not particularly progressive in his views toward the advancement of women in society. Still, the larger Republican public is seeing that it is acceptable to choose someone other than a middle-aged or elderly white man for a role of leadership. Granted, these processes go both ways, and McCain picked Palin because he anticipated that it would go down well with his audience; but, as Kov said, people didn't really see it coming, which means that in the conservative camp it's still a bit of a novelty. Independent of who wins, this sets precedent: and yeah, Geraldine Ferraro was precedent too, but this is different. Ferraro was a Democrat, the cultural barrier was less impenetrable, even back in the day. If the right-wing public are now more willing to accept women in office, then more power to McCain, even if I don't really like him.
As for the equal work for equal pay story, well, here I have a technical rather than political opinion. The American economy is way more market- and profit-oriented than the economies we are used to in Europe, which means that the connection between an employee's performance and the salary that the employer is willing to pay is more significant. In our country, employers are so constrained by unions and legislation that they cannot really discriminate (in the neutral sense) between different employees, so they have to pay a lot of money for people who do little, and they cut their costs by being utter dicks and under-paying women of childbearing age*. It's way simpler in the US. If someone doesn't bring you money, you let them go, man or woman. If someone brings you a lot of money, you pay them more, man or woman. In this sense, the equal pay for equal work idea is akin to our collective contract legislation - pointless hindrance which is eventually going to be a burden on the economy. In this sense, I don't hold a grudge against anyone for voting against it. I think that I myself would vote against it, despite being a woman.
*
If this appears to make no sense whatsoever, note that in the private sector there is a big gap - at least in my country - between unionized workers and non-unionized workers. Unionized = middle-aged and mostly male. Non-unionized = young. Young people don't join unions because unions don't do shit for them, due to a chronic lack of money, too much of which was spent on protecting the privileges of the middle-aged. So basically a young woman who applies for work is going to be turned down lest she accept some informal/illegal arrangement involving either "When you get pregnant you're out of here" or smaller pay compared to her male colleague, but she grins and bears it, as it's better than no work. Of course, if we had a real market for goods and services this would not happen. Like, ever. That's why we mostly have this in the South.
