Abstract
Because of the large number of women taking jobs in the war industries during World War II, the governments urged employers in 1942 to voluntarily make “adjustments which equalize wage or salary rates paid to females with the rates paid to males for comparable quality and quantity of work on the same or similar operations.”
Not only did employers fail to listen to this “voluntary” request, but also, at the end of the war, most women lost their new jobs to make room for returning veterans.
Until the early 1960s, newspapers published separate job listings for men and women. Jobs were categorised according to sex, with the higher level jobs listed almost exclusively under “Help Wanted—Male.” In some cases the ads ran identical jobs under male and female listings—but with separate pay scales. Separate, of course, meant unequal: between 1950 and 1960, women with full-time jobs earned on average between 59–64 cents for every dollar their male counterparts earned in the same job.
It wasn't until the passage of the Equal Pay Act on June 10, 1963 (effective June 11, 1964) that it became illegal to pay women lower rates for the same job strictly on the basis of their sex. Demonstrable differences in seniority, merit, the quality or quantity of work, or other considerations might merit different pay, but gender could no longer be viewed as a disadvantage.
The act was gradually expanded over the next decade to include a larger segment of the workforce, and between June 1964 and Jan. 1971 back wages totalling more than $26 million were paid to 71,000 women. Two landmark court cases served to strengthen and further define the Equal Pay Act:
• Schultz v. Wheaton Glass Co. (1970), U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit: Ruled that jobs need to be “substantially equal” but not “identical” to fall under the protection of the Equal Pay Act. An employer cannot, for example, change the job titles of women workers in order to pay them less than men.
• Corning Glass Works v. Brennan (1974), U.S. Supreme Court: Ruled that employers cannot justify paying women lower wages because that is what they traditionally received under the “going market rate.” A wage differential occurring “simply because men would not work at the low rates paid women” was unacceptable.
The obvious discrimination apparent in these court cases seems archaic today, as does the practice of sex-segregated job listings. The workplace has changed radically in the four decades since the passage of the Equal Pay Act.
But what has not changed substantially, however, is women's pay. The wage gap has narrowed, but it is still significant. Women earned 59% of the wages men earned in 1963; in 1997 they earned 74% of men's wages—an improvement of less than half a penny a year. Why is there still such a disparity?
I will study what is the Equal Pay Act 1970 in a first part, then I will have a look at an example where the Act is used and finally I will evaluate the Act.
