( CNN ) -- President Obama recently gave a speech urging Congress to raise the minimum wage and announced on Wednesday plans to require employers to pay overtime to more salaried employers . The President is certainly doing the right thing for the American public , especially women . A recent poll conducted by Quinnipiac University shows that women are huge fans of raising the national minimum wage . Seventy-six percent of women and 65 % of men surveyed support it . Minimum wage is poised to be a driving issue this year . Given how it polls among women , Republicans should seize the chance to enact good policy and good politics with a group of voters they 've been alienating . According to a CNN/ORC International Poll , 55 % of Americans say the GOP does n't understand women . That number rises to 59 % among all women and 64 % among women older than 50 . The 2012 election might have been one of the most embarrassing in recent memory for Republicans , who insulted female voters time and again and seemed tone deaf about the challenges that women face . The result is that women ran from the GOP in droves . The bad news for Republicans is that this voting trend wo n't change overnight , not as the `` party of family values '' continues to reject any ounce of family-friendly policy that might help women and their families grow and thrive . The GOP 's policies do n't just harken back to the `` Mad Men '' era ; Fred Flintstone could be their architect . They do n't really consider women as the powerful economic agents they are . In large numbers , both House and Senate Republicans voted against restoring the rights of women to challenge fair pay practices when they were curtailed by the Supreme Court . Republicans also blocked the Paycheck Fairness Act , which would provide more effective remedies to women who are not being paid equal wages for doing equal work . Equal pay would not only help the families who depend on female breadwinners , but it would also be a boon for the overall economy by adding $ 447.6 billion to the GDP . Failing to raise the minimum wage might be a boondoggle for the current set of Republican lawmakers , in that almost two-thirds of minimum wage earners are women , and women care about this issue deeply . There should be a lot for conservatives to like in raising the minimum wage . Raising the wage to $ 10.10 would save $ 46 billion from the federal coffers in food assistance , an area where Republicans have said they want to find significant savings . That is real savings for those who claim to care about deficits : $ 4.6 billion in the first year alone . Republicans would be smart to leave behind minimum wage deniers like Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Rep. Joe Barton of Texas , who have expressed the view that they do n't even think we need a minimum wage . These views are out of the mainstream of the American public and threaten to return the American workforce to the dark ages of employee abuse and mistreatment . The women who earn the minimum wage are not teenagers working the counter at McDonalds ; they are caregivers , child care workers and retail workers . Nearly 80 % of women who earned at or below the minimum wage in 2012 were 20 years old or older , and just less than 40 % were 30 years old or older . Oftentimes , these are women who are the breadwinners or co-breadwinners for their entire families , so adding to their wages could potentially give them additional buying power , which can help lift the economy overall . Instead of agreeing to a media friendly set of promises to try harder to court female candidates , and finding the right female elected members to be the outward face of the party , women want Republicans to dig a little deeper to find the real solutions that would make their lives better . This is n't about using the right buzzwords to not insult women , their bodies , or their place in the family . What would really matter is if Republicans advocated for women where it counts : as breadwinners and drivers of our economic growth . The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Andrea Purse .
President Obama recently urged Congress to raise the national minimum wage . The White House has said it will propose a bill in coming weeks that would increase wages for millions of workers and help lift families out of poverty. She says raising minimum wage to $ 10.10 would save $ 46 billion from the federal coffers . Purse : Republicans need to see women as breadwinners and drivers of economic growth .