equal pay for equal work essay

Equal Pay for Equal Work: Pass the Paycheck Fairness Act

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2013, women who worked full time earned, on average, only 78 cents for every dollar men earned. The figures are even worse for women of color. African American women earned only approximately 64 cents and Latinas only 56 cents for each dollar earned by a white male.

The Paycheck Fairness Act will help secure equal pay for equal work for all Americans. The bill would update the Equal Pay Act of 1963, a law that has not been able to achieve its promise of closing the wage gap because of limited enforcement tools and inadequate remedies. The Paycheck Fairness Act would make critical changes to the law, including:

• requiring employers to demonstrate that wage differentials are based on factors other than sex;
• prohibiting retaliation against workers who inquire about their employers’ wage practices or disclose their own wages;
• permitting reasonable comparisons between employees within clearly defined geographical areas to determine fair wages;
• strengthening penalties for equal pay violations;
• directing the Department of Labor to assist employers and collect wage-related data; and
• authorizing additional training for Equal Employment Opportunity Commission staff to better identify and handle wage disputes.

The time has come to make equal pay a reality. During this climate of unprecedented economic uncertainty, nothing could be more important than ensuring that all workers receive equal pay for equal work.

• Executive Action Needed to End Employment Discrimination (2/6/2014)
• Fulfilling the Promise of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act (2/3/2014)
• Lilly Ledbetter: Celebrating a Champion Still Fighting for Us (1/29/2014)
• Celebrating Equal Pay (And Bacon!) at the White House (6/12/2013)
• Fifty Years Later, Fulfilling the Promise of Equal Pay (6/10/2013)
• Happy 50th Birthday, Equal Pay Act! (6/10/2013)
• ACLU and the Equal Pay Act of 1963: Celebrating 50 Years of Advocacy (6/6/2013)
• Celebrate Women’s Equality Day – Support Equal Pay Today! (8/26/2013)
• 18 More Cents… in 50 years (4/9/2013)
• What Would You Do With $11,000? (4/9/2013)
• “Our Journey is Not Complete” – Equal Pay Requires Passage of Paycheck Fairness Act (01/29/2013) crossposted to The Hill
• On the First Anniversary of Wal-Mart v. Dukes: Stand Up or Be Trampled (6/20/2012)
• An Unhappy Anniversary for the Equal Pay Act (6/6/2012)
• The Paycheck Fairness Act: It’s Time to Stop the Catch 22 (6/4/2012)
• Paycheck Fairness Act Is Sorely Needed (5/4/2012)
• We Can’t Wait For Fair Pay (4/17/2012)

ADVOCACY DOCUMENTS <!– Urge President Obama to Ban Retaliation in Federal Contracting –>

• ACLU Factsheet on the Paycheck Fairness Act (Updated March 2015)
• ACLU Letter in Support of Paycheck Fairness Act for Senate Floor Vote September 2014
• ACLU Letter in Support of Paycheck Fairness Act for Senate Floor Vote 2014 (Updated 4/8/2014)
• ACLU Factsheet on Anti-Retaliation Executive Order – April 2014 (4/3/2014)
• ACLU Letter in Support of Paycheck Fairness Act for Senate Floor Vote 2014 (4/3/2014)
• ACLU Letter in Support of the Paycheck Fairness Act (S.84) for Senate HELP Hearing (3/31/2014)
• ACLU Letter to Congress in Support of the Paycheck Fairness Act Reintroduction (1/23/2013)
• ACLU Letter to President Obama on Executive Order Banning Retaliation for Wage Inquiries in Federal Contracting (4/17/2012)
• ACLU Letter on Paycheck Fairness Act Co-Sponsorship (4/7/2011)

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Paycheck Fairness Bill Necessary to Strengthen Equal Pay Protections (7/31/2008) –>

<!– TAKE ACTION Urge President Obama to Ban Retaliation in Federal Contracting. Did you know that you can be fired for disclosing your own wages to a co-worker? And did you know that on the 50th anniversary of President Kennedy’s signing of the Equal Pay Act of 1963, women still, on average, make only 77 cents for every dollar earned by a man? The figures are even more dismal for women of color – in 2011, African-American women only earned approximately 64 cents and Latinas only 55 cents for each dollar earned by a white man. Urge President Obama ban retaliation in federal contracting for wage inquires. Take Action! » –> SPECIAL FEATURE 50th Anniversary of Equal Pay Act This year marks the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s signing of the Equal Pay Act of 1963. This landmark piece of federal anti-discrimination law was one of the very first to address gender-based pay disparities. On the day he signed it, President Kennedy called the act a “first step” which “affirms our determination that when women enter the labor force they will find equality in their pay envelopes.” But he noted that “much remains to be done to achieve full equality of economic opportunity.” Learn More »

SPECIAL FEATURE Pay Equity The ACLU works to end discrimination in the workplace and ensure that all workers — regardless of sex, race, national origin, age or disability—are able to bring home every dollar they rightfully earn. As a result of discrimination, including employers’ reliance on gender stereotypes, women lack parity with men in earnings. Learn More »

Related Issues

• Women's Rights
• Women's Rights in the Workplace
• Pregnancy and Parenting Discrimination

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Equal pay for equal work - Essay Examples And Topic Ideas For Free

Equal pay for equal work is a gender equality principle aimed at eliminating the gender pay gap. Essays on this topic might explore the historical evolution of the gender pay gap, the legislative measures to address the issue, or the societal and economic implications of gender pay disparity. Discussions could also delve into comparative analysis of gender pay equality across different countries, industries, or companies. The topic provides a wide arena for analyzing gender dynamics in the workplace and exploring solutions to achieve gender economic equality. A vast selection of complimentary essay illustrations pertaining to Equal pay for equal work you can find at PapersOwl Website. You can use our samples for inspiration to write your own essay, research paper, or just to explore a new topic for yourself.

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‘Women’s Work’ Can No Longer Be Taken for Granted

New Zealand is pursuing a century-old idea to close the gender pay gap: not equal pay for equal work, but equal pay for work of equal value.

By Anna Louie Sussman

Ms. Sussman is a journalist.

Last week, as Americans were obsessing over the results of the presidential election, a New Zealand law aimed at eliminating pay discrimination against women in female-dominated occupations went into effect . The bill, which takes an approach known as “pay equity,” provides a road map for addressing the seemingly intractable gender pay gap .

Unlike “equal pay” — the concept most often used to address gender pay disparities in the United States — the concept of “pay equity” doesn’t just demand equal pay for women doing the same work as men, in the same positions. Such efforts, while worthwhile, ignore the role of occupational segregation in keeping women’s pay down: There are some jobs done mostly by women and others that are still largely the province of men. The latter are typically better paid.

But if the coronavirus has taught us anything, it is that what has traditionally been women’s work — caring, cleaning, the provision of food — can no longer be taken for granted. “It’s not the bankers and the hedge fund managers and the highest paid people” upon whose services we’ve come to rely, said Amy Ross, former national organizer for New Zealand ’s Public Service Association union. “It’s our supermarket workers, it’s our cleaners, it’s our nurses — and they’re all women!”

It has also taught us how poorly these jobs are compensated. Over half of workers designated essential in the United States are women; their jobs are typically paid well below the median hourly wage of a little over $19 an hour. ( Median hourly pay for cashiers is just $11.37; for child care workers it’s $11.65; health support workers such as home health aides and orderlies make $12.68.)

Instead of “equal pay for equal work,” supporters of pay equity call for “equal pay for work of equal value,” or “comparable worth.” They ask us to consider whether a female-dominated occupation such as nursing home aide, for instance, is really so different from a male-dominated one, such as corrections officer, when both are physically exhausting, emotionally demanding, and stressful — and if not, why is the nursing home aide paid so much less? In the words of New Zealand’s law, the pay scale for women should be “determined by reference to what men would be paid to do the same work abstracting from skills, responsibility, conditions and degrees of effort.”

What is at stake is not just a simple pay raise but a societywide reckoning with the value of “women’s work.” How much do we really think this work is worth? But also: How do we decide?

The idea of pay equity is at least a century old. A 1919 draft of the International Labor Organization’s constitution, which formed part of the Treaty of Versailles, cites “the principle that men and women should receive equal remuneration for work of equal value.” The I.L.O.’s Equal Remuneration Convention, which went into force in 1953, has been ratified by 173 member countries (the United States is one of 14 holdouts). Still, the gender pay gap remains a feature of nearly every economy on earth.

The movement for pay equity gained momentum in North America in the late 1970s and 1980s, when provinces across Canada began passing pay equity laws and several U.S. states with strong labor movements, including Minnesota, Wisconsin and Hawaii, undertook pay equity evaluations for public employees. (As a result, in 1982, clerk typists in Minnesota saw their monthly pay increased by $267, to match that of a delivery van driver, according to the National Committee on Pay Equity’s website .)

But the movement, in the United States at least, lost much of its momentum just a few years later, when a 1985 ruling in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit overturned a judgment by a Federal District Court that would have given female Washington state employees substantial raises based on a pay equity study. Judge Anthony Kennedy, who would later go onto the Supreme Court, wrote the opinion, in which he argued that the Washington state pay equity plan required the state to “eliminate an economic inequality that it did not create,” thus interfering with the free market for labor. With that ruling, alongside other legal setbacks courtesy of conservative judges appointed by President Ronald Reagan, and the broader ascendance of free-market thought, the movement lost its legal leverage. By the early 1990s, the pay equity movement was faltering.

The political and legal campaign for equal pay had preceded the pay equity movement. Pushed by the college-educated women who dominated mainstream feminist groups, and who sought to work alongside men in corporations, universities, and law firms, the equal pay movement was initially less attentive to the concerns of low-wage workers in pink-collar jobs, argues Michael McCann, a University of Washington professor who wrote a 1994 book on pay equity. But after the judicial rulings of the 1980s undercut the comparable worth legal framework, equal pay became the dominant standard for addressing the gender gap in the United States

In 1972, New Zealand passed an equal pay law that could have, in theory, required a pay-equity type of approach: The law included a provision calling for equal compensation for work “exclusively or predominantly performed by female employees” with “the same, or substantially similar, skills, responsibility and service … under the same, or substantially similar, conditions and with the same, or substantially similar, degrees of effort” as work performed by men. But courts, until recently, interpreted the provision narrowly: to mean equal pay for identical work.

Then, in 2012, Kristine Bartlett, a caregiver who had worked for more than 20 years in a home for the aged making barely above minimum wage, filed a claim with the Employment Relations Authority against her employer, TerraNova Homes and Care. TerraNova relied on traditional equal pay logic in its defense, arguing that it paid its four male caregivers the same as its 106 female caregivers.

The claimants asked the court to take a pay equity approach instead and to look more closely at the actual nature of the work. They argued that caring for elderly people was just as demanding and dangerous as better-paid jobs mostly performed by men, including, notably, prison guards. One filing by Ms. Bartlett’s union noted that both jobs require “dealing with challenging behaviors including sexual behaviors and/or aggression.” Arguably, care home workers could be even more at risk, since while corrections facilities are specifically designed to promote maximum security for workers, care homes are not. Before the claim was settled, Ms. Bartlett was earning $15.75 (U.S. $11.20) an hour, 50 cents above the New Zealand minimum wage, for work her union estimated was worth $26 (U.S. $18.50) an hour.

Ms. Bartlett’s claim was settled out of court through a three-way negotiation between union officials, employers and the government in 2017, resulting in pay increases of 15 to 49 percent for 55,000 workers (paid for by the government, which funds elder care in New Zealand through contracts with private firms and NGOs). The outcome sparked a wave of new claims throughout the public sector from other female-dominated occupations, including midwives, social workers and school support staff. The same year, the newly elected Labour government, led by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, set to work: The government would follow through on her party’s campaign promise to amend the 1972 law to finally deliver true pay equity.

In 2015, a 15-member joint working group , made up of union leaders, employer representatives and government officials, had begun meeting to agree on a set of principles for resolving pay equity claims. A 2018 settlement on behalf of around 1,300 state-employed social workers was proof of concept, said Ms. Ross, the lead advocate for those negotiations. It was a chance to show the recommended principles — in particular, that female-dominated occupations should be evaluated in a way as free from bias as possible — could work in practice.

Economics 101 says wages are set by the intersection of a supply curve and a demand curve — if demand for say, data scientists is high, and there aren’t enough of them to fill the available roles, data scientists will have more pricing power over their wages. But in the real world (and, sometimes, in Economics 201), most people recognize that wages encapsulate a host of other factors: monopoly and monopsony (buyer’s monopoly) power, the quirks of a given firm or institution, and, most relevant to pay equity, social beliefs about the relative value of a job. These social beliefs inevitably intersect with biases like racism and sexism, which then manifest in ways both formal and informal.

The 1950s — a time when only around a third of women were in the work force and their earnings were often referred to as “pin money” — saw the rapid rise of job evaluation tools, which were developed decades earlier as a way to analyze and classify jobs within an organization so as to systematize roles and pay scales. One of the most widely used, the Hay method, attempted to capture not tasks, but rather, the various skills, competencies and responsibilities that make up a given job; each of these was then assigned a weight and graded according to a point system. These tools, which are today still commonly used in large firms and in government bureaucracies, were intended to measure and rank the work being done by different employees, from line workers to chief executives, as organizations grew and became more complex.

At the time, given the nature of the economy, these tools largely applied to jobs held by male workers in manufacturing firms, said Ronnie J. Steinberg, a longtime pay equity advocate and professor of sociology emerita at Vanderbilt University. They eventually came to encompass managerial, executive and administrative roles, but the built-in male bias held strong.

Most job evaluation methodologies ignored what the sociologist Arlie Hochschild called “emotional labor” — adjusting one’s feelings in order to competently perform a job — while others, if they measured some aspect of it, often treated it as a proxy for the femaleness of a job, so that jobs with high levels of emotional labor wound up with lower pay.

As a result, an evaluation tool might rate dog pound attendants and parking lot attendants as more highly skilled than nursery schoolteachers, Dr. Steinberg noted. She and others have since developed gender-neutral job evaluation systems, but their implementation still hinges on who is doing the evaluation and what aspects of the work they’re able to recognize and document.

In effect, New Zealand is engaged in a countrywide effort to use these tools to fundamentally rethink the value of the work typically done by women. But where equal pay processes are relatively straightforward, pay equity, when done properly, challenges us to think deeply and objectively about a job and its components. This can be a messy process, one that requires unlearning decades of bias about gender and work, as well as political good will and a spirit of collaboration.

To negotiate the New Zealand social workers’ settlement, for instance, a working group composed of union officials, delegates from the Ministry of Children, social workers and employer representatives undertook a comprehensive assessment process to build a richer understanding of the social worker’s role. In dwelling on parts of the job that are often overlooked — the emotional demands, the problem-solving, the physical danger — many at the table were surprised at its difficulty and complexity. Even articulating the role’s various demands and skills posed a challenge.

“People struggled with the language to describe it, and that speaks to the undervaluation in itself, because we don’t often have the language to really talk about the skills we’re using,” Ms. Ross said. What skills are being deployed to, say, deal with someone who is angry and doesn’t want to be there, and several hours later, with someone who is needy and crying, all while maintaining meaningful boundaries? To describe this capacity to navigate “these emotionally complex situations — how to be both emotionally present but not emotionally enmeshed,” as Ms. Ross put it, the group eventually came up with the term “emotional dexterity.”

Although everyone at the table sought consensus, disagreements arose. The employer advocates, for example, hesitated to classify “listening” as a skill, arguing that anyone can listen; Ms. Ross, herself a former social worker, tried to explain how active listening entails not just hearing, but also picking up on what goes unsaid, the way things are said and what that means in context. When employers were skeptical that the job’s cumulative stresses were severe enough to result in post-traumatic stress disorder, social worker delegates at the table testified about their experience of hearing stories every day about physical or sexual abuse and the treatment they needed for their own emotional distress.

Based on what they had learned about social work, each side came to the table with proposals for comparable male-dominated occupations, but quickly realized they were better off identifying a set of agreed-upon criteria (that these jobs should be at least 66 percent male, have a collective bargaining agreement and also be public sector jobs) to create an initial longlist. This list included several outliers, such as surgeons (who undergo highly specialized training) and park rangers (who face no barrier to entry into the profession), that were quickly tossed out.

What remained were four occupations that all parties agreed were potentially comparable with social workers in different aspects of the work: detectives and family violence constables in the New Zealand Police, engineers employed by the Auckland City Council and air traffic controllers for Airways New Zealand. All of these roles require alertness and focus and therefore rate highly on sensory demands. On the other hand, they vary widely in the degree of physical effort or emotional skills involved (a published analysis of the occupations noted that air traffic controllers, for example, “operate within a highly codified environment,” which reduces the need for interpersonal skills.)

The next step was administering a questionnaire to workers in these occupations. (The questionnaire included sections on problem-solving skills, physical demands, interpersonal skills and emotional demands.) Based on the answers, as well as a range of data, such as health and safety records and professional body requirements, each component of the job was given a point rating, which formed the basis for understanding the skills and responsibilities involved in each role. These, in turn, formed the basis for negotiating the social workers’ pay.

The final settlement included an average 30.6 percent pay increase, phased in over two years. It was, to Ms. Ross’s surprise, a higher figure than the union had historically promoted — and a powerful argument for going through the job evaluation process with the goal of eliminating gender-based undervaluation, rather than targeting a specific pay hike.

The job evaluation process yielded another unexpected benefit. Ms. Ross said many social workers found the analysis of their work “more valuable” than the pay raise itself. Some, on seeing the many skills and competencies they brought to work every day spelled out in a detailed assessment, were moved to tears.

Many, she said, were “seeing themselves as skilled professionals for the first time.”

Unions in New Zealand are currently pursuing over a dozen public sector claims, covering, among others, library assistants, clerical workers and customer-facing roles, which were all prioritized because of their high shares of Maori and Pasifika women and especially low pay.

New Zealand is not the only country taking serious steps toward pay equity. The World Bank’s most recent Women, Business and the Law report notes that since 2017, seven economies have introduced legislation requiring employers to grant equal pay for work of equal value, though they vary in scope and ambition. In December 2018, Canada passed a federal pay equity act , which covers federal public agencies and state-regulated private firms such as banks, airlines and telecommunication firms, and requires firms to proactively implement pay equity plans. In 2017, Iceland passed a law requiring organizations with more than 25 employees to evaluate workers’ pay based on their comparative responsibilities; the results were to be certified by third-party auditors.

Unlike New Zealand’s law, however, which allows claimants to look across nearly the whole of the labor market for male comparators, Canada and Iceland’s laws only require companies to undertake pay equity efforts at the organization or firm level; as a result, they’re inherently limited, since some firms will still be focused primarily on professions dominated by women or those dominated by men.

New Zealand’s more ambitious law is also notable for the buy-in it garnered at the legislative level. Several New Zealanders pointed to the unanimous vote on the pay equity law as an important sign of where the public had moved on the issue. “It wasn’t seen to be politically tenable to oppose equal pay, because that’s just wrong,” said Kerry Davies, national secretary of the New Zealand Public Service Association.

Even so, New Zealand has, so far, been able to take the steps it has because the government pays for these wages. It’s not yet clear when, or whether, these efforts will work their way into the private sector. The vast majority of New Zealand’s businesses are small, with some 95 percent of firms employing fewer than 20 people. Not all of these employers are wealthy, nor are these small firms universally profitable, said Paul Mackay, manager for employment relations policy at BusinessNZ, an advocacy group for New Zealand companies.

But proponents of pay equity say arguments about affordability miss the point. “Employers are not entitled to make even small profits on the backs of underpaid women,” said Linda Hill, a member of the Coalition for Equal Value, Equal Pay, a group of feminists who have worked in different fields on this issue for years. “Businesses that can’t pay fair wages aren’t viable businesses.” Still, especially in the private sector, this money will have to come from somewhere, raising uncomfortable questions about our expectations of cost, value, and worth.

In the United States and elsewhere, it has taken extreme levels of injustice and deprivation, and a once-in-a-lifetime crisis, to expose the emptiness of how different types of work are valued. We are finally beginning to grapple with fundamental questions about what makes a worker truly “essential” — but how far will this grappling actually go?

There are important efforts now underway — the push for a higher minimum wage, say, or more visibility for domestic workers — but they fail to address a deeper problem: The thing that so many of today’s most underpaid and essential workers have in common is simply that they are women. In America, where state support for gender equality has never been less robust, pay equity’s financial obligation will likely fall on individuals. Are we willing to pay more, say, at the grocery store, or to the home health aides who look after our elderly? Are we willing to re-examine the assumptions embedded in what we have been told are “free markets” for labor?

New Zealand’s experience in the coming years will serve as an experiment in what happens when an entire society, led by a feminist prime minister, decides, in effect, to say yes.

Anna Louie Sussman is a journalist who writes on gender and economics. She is working on her first book, about the relationship between capitalism and reproduction. This article was supported by the Economic Hardship Reporting Project .

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

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Susan B. Anthony

Champion of temperance, abolition, the rights of labor, and equal pay for equal work, Susan Brownell Anthony became one of the most visible leaders of the women’s suffrage movement . Along with Elizabeth Cady Stanton , she traveled around the country delivering speeches in favor of women's suffrage.

Susan B. Anthony was born on February 15, 1820 in Adams, Massachusetts. Her father, Daniel, was a farmer and later a cotton mill owner and manager and was raised as a Quaker. Her mother, Lucy, came from a family that fought in the American Revolution and served in the Massachusetts state government. From an early age, Anthony was inspired by the Quaker belief that everyone was equal under God. That idea guided her throughout her life. She had seven brothers and sisters, many of whom became activists for justice and emancipation of slaves. 

After many years of teaching, Anthony returned to her family who had moved to New York State. There she met William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass , who were friends of her father. Listening to them moved Susan to want to do more to help end slavery. She became an abolition activist, even though most people thought it was improper for women to give speeches in public. Anthony made many passionate speeches against slavery.

In 1848, a group of women held a convention at Seneca Falls , New York. It was the first Women’s Rights Convention in the United States and began the Suffrage movement. Her mother and sister attended the convention but Anthony did not. In 1851, Anthony met Elizabeth Cady Stanton. T he two women became good friends and worked together for over 50 years fighting for women’s rights. They traveled the country and Anthony gave speeches demanding that women be given the right to vote. At times, she risked being arrested for sharing her ideas in public.

Anthony was good at strategy. Her discipline, energy, and ability to organize made her a strong and successful leader. Anthony and Stanton co-founded the American Equal Rights Association. In 1868 they became editors of the Association’s newspaper, The Revolution , which helped to spread the ideas of equality and rights for women. Anthony began to lecture to raise money for publishing the newspaper and to support the suffrage movement. She became famous throughout the county. Many people admired her, yet others hated her ideas.

When Congress passed the 14 th and 15 th amendments  which give voting rights to African American men, Anthony and Stanton were angry and opposed the legislation because it did not include the right to vote for women. Their belief led them to split from other suffragists. They thought the amendments should also have given women the right to vote. They formed the National Woman Suffrage Association , to push for a constitutional amendment giving women the right to vote.

In 1872, Anthony was arrested for voting. She was tried and fined $100 for her crime. This made many people angry and brought national attention to the suffrage movement. In 1876, she led a protest at the 1876 Centennial of our nation’s independence. She gave a speech—“Declaration of Rights”—written by Stanton and another suffragist, Matilda Joslyn Gage.

“Men, their rights, and nothing more; women, their rights, and nothing less.”

Anthony spent her life working for women’s rights. In 1888, she helped to merge the two largest suffrage associations into one, the National American Women’s Suffrage Association . She led the group until 1900. She traveled around the country giving speeches, gathering thousands of signatures on petitions, and lobbying Congress every year for women. Anthony died in 1906, 14 years before women were given the right to vote with the passage of the 19 th Amendment in 1920.

• Anthony, Susan. “Declaration of Rights of the Women of the United States by the National Woman Suffrage Association, July 4th, 1876.” The Elizabeth Cady Stanton & Susan B. Anthony Papers Project. http://ecssba.rutgers.edu/docs/decl.html . Accessed May 2016. 
• “Biography of Susan B. Anthony.” National Susan B. Anthony Museum & House. http://susanbanthonyhouse.org/her-story/biography.php . Accessed May 2016.
• Lange, Allison. “Suffragist Organize: National Woman Suffrage Association.” National Women’s History Musuem. http://www.crusadeforthevote.org/nwsa-organize/ . Accessed May 2016. 
• Lange, Allison. “Suffragist Unite: National American Woman Suffrage Association.” National Women’s History Museum. http://www.crusadeforthevote.org/nawsa-united/ . Accessed May 2016.
• Mayo, Edith. “Rights for Women: The Suffrage Movement and Its Leaders.” National Women’s History Museum. https://www.nwhm.org/online-exhibits/rightsforwomen/index.html . Accessed May 2016.   
• “Susan B. Anthony.” National Park Service. https://www.nps.gov/wori/learn/historyculture/susan-b-anthony.htm . Accessed May 2016.
• PHOTO:  Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University .

MLA – Hayward, Nancy. “Susan B. Anthony.” National Women’s History Museum, 2017. Date accessed.

Chicago – Hayward, Nancy. “Susan B. Anthony.” National Women’s History Museum. 2017. www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/susan-brownell-anthony.

• Crusade for the Vote, National Women's History Museum
• Rights for Women, National Women's History Museum
• Susan B. Anthony House
• 1873 Speech of Susan B. Anthony on woman suffrage
• Susan B. Anthony House, National Park Service
• Susan B. Anthony, National Women's Hall of Fame
• Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony Project
• Public Broadcasting System (PBS) - "Not For Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony"
• Trial of Susan B. Anthony
• Anthony, Susan B. The Trial of Susan B. Anthony (Humanity Books, 2003).
• Anthony, Katherine Susan. Susan B. Anthony: Her Personal History and Her Era (Russell & Russell, 1975).
• Barry, Kathleen. Susan B. Anthony: A Biography of a Singular Feminist (Authorhouse, 2000).
• Dubois, Ellen Carol. The Elizabeth Cady Stanton-Susan B. Anthony Reader: Correspondences, Writings and Speeches (Boston: Northeaster University Press, 1992).
• Harper, Ida. Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Beaufort books - 3 volume set).
• Isaacs, Sally Senzell. America in the Time of Susan B. Anthony: The Story of Our Nation from Coast to Coast (Heinemann Library, 2000).
• Monsell, Helen Albee. Susan B. Anthony: Champion Women's Rights (Aladdin, 1986).
• Sherr, Lynn. Failure is Impossible: Susan B. Anthony in Her Own Words (Three Rivers Press, 1996).
• Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, Ann De Gordon, and Susan B. Anthony. Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony: In the School of Anti-Slavery, 1840-1866 (Rutgers, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1997).
• Ward, Geoffery C. and Ken Burns. Not For Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony (Knopf, 2001).

Related Biographies

Stacey Abrams

Abigail Smith Adams

Jane Addams

Toshiko Akiyoshi

Related background, mary church terrell , belva lockwood and the precedents she set for women’s rights, women’s rights lab: black women’s clubs, educational equality & title ix:.

Equal pay for work of equal value

Worldwide, women only make 77 cents for every dollar earned by men. As a result, there’s a lifetime of income inequality between men and women and more women are retiring into poverty.

This stubborn inequality in the average wages between men and women persists in all countries and across all sectors, because women’s work is under-valued and women tend to be concentrated in different jobs than men. Even though the work itself may require equal or more effort and skills, it’s valued and remunerated less. For women of colour, immigrant women and mothers, the gap widens. The so-called “motherhood penalty” pushes women into informal economy, casual and part-time work, and tends to be larger in developing countries than in developed countries.

Join the campaign for equal pay

Join #StopTheRobbery campaign by UN Women to raise awareness of the gender pay gap. Globally, women only make 77 cents for every dollar earned by men, effectively being “robbed”. Visit 23percentrobbery.com to spread the word and help stop the biggest robbery in history.

Take five: At the current rate of progress, no equal pay until 2069

Across the world, women still get paid 23 per cent less than men. Chidi King, Director of the Equality Department of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), the main international trade union organization representing the interests of working people worldwide, and a member of UN Women and ILO’s Equal Pay Champions initiative, unpacks the issue.

What actions are needed to bridge the gender pay gap?

Closing the gender pay gap requires a package of measures, central to which is decent work. 

One of the most effective and quickest ways to narrow gender pay gaps is through minimum living wages (or wage floors) and universal social protection. Minimum living wages benefit all low paid workers. Since women are starkly overrepresented in low paid work, it would usually benefit women more dramatically. Germany, for example, recently introduced a national minimum wage to tackle its stubborn gender wage gap of 22.4 per cent. This needs to be backed up by universal social protection... Read the full interview to learn what drives gender pay gap, who’s impacted and more»

Other voices:

Take Five: “Managing a company is about managing talents, there’s no place for discrimination” 

Askar Baitassov, Chief Executive Officer of Kazakhstan’s AB Restaurants chain talks about why the company champions gender equality. AB Restaurants is the first company in Central Asia to sign on to the Women’s Empowerment Principles (WEPs), a joint initiative of UN Women and the UN Global Compact, which places gender equality at the heart of good business practices. Read more»

Take five: “Women now represent 50 per cent of the company’s board members”

Mustafa Seçkin, Vice-President, Unilever N. Africa, Middle East, Turkey, Russia, Ukraine and Belarus talks about how the Women’s Empowerment Principles have shaped and improved work place culture and performance at Univeler Turkey. Read more»

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Equal Pay for Equal Work: Employer Accountability is Essential

By debra fitzpatrick | april 10, 2018.

Equal Pay Day – April 10, 2018 – is the approximate date in the New Year to which the average US woman must work to make what the average US man earned at the end of 2017. Of course, for African American, American Indian and Latina women this day comes around much later in the year.  As we mark this day each year, it drives home the persistence of the gender pay gap and the failure of our current laws to address it. What policy changes are necessary to achieve the intuitive and popular goal of “equal pay for equal work?”

President Obama’s first act as President was to sign the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act . While the act importantly extended the statute of limitations under current federal Equal Pay law, it did not address other limitations of the “equal pay” legal framework, including: (1) lack of employer level accountability and/or transparency; (2) narrow definitions of “equal work;” (3) a singular focus on gender inequities to the exclusion of other pay inequity generators such as race; (4) the role of other employment decisions that indirectly affect pay differentials; and (5) weak enforcement.

I focus on the first limitation –employer accountability – because this is where we are today witnessing rollbacks by the Trump administration, but also some important advances by states.

Federal Rollbacks

During the Obama Administration, Republicans blocked Democrats in Congress committed to paycheck fairness when they attempted to improve equal pay laws. Consequently, President Obama used executive actions to make equal pay a priority . Arguably his most important executive action on the pay gap was to require large corporations to report pay data  by race, ethnicity, and gender to the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). This kind of data reporting would require employers to compile and analyze pay data periodically and, once reported, these data could be used by the EEOC to target audits and other potential enforcement actions.

While President Trump surrogate Ivanka Trump called for “equal pay” last year at this time (and earlier on the campaign trail), she backed efforts last August by the administration’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to block these same EEOC equal pay data collection regulations. OMB placed an immediate and indefinite stay on the equal pay data collection, without any guidance on timeline or process.

Why Employer Accountability Matters

The federal Equal Pay Act of 1963 prohibits sex-based wage discrimination. Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act also prohibits wage discrimination based on race, color, national origin, and sex. Under these laws, and state-based versions of them, employers are required to pay employees equally for performing equal work except where pay differences can be explained by permissible factors. While important and effective under some circumstances, this legal framework is complaint-based. It requires individual workers to step forward and face huge hurdles when they do so.  “Much of the risk and responsibility lies with the woman.”   She must find out she is being paid less and document it, which can be difficult or impossible due to pay secrecy. Then she must find the resources to file a complaint or lawsuit, and handle the almost inevitable retaliation from her employer that follows. And if she goes the EEOC route, only one in three times will she prevail due to narrow legal interpretations. These constraints and others have limited the effectiveness of state and federal equal pay laws.

Scholars of work and workplace organizations point out that inequality at work doesn’t “ emerge from the ether, nor from amorphous occupations or industries.” It is developed within the routines, policies and practices that organizations use to recruit, evaluate, hire and retain employees. These same scholars have documented that organizational structures and practices once established are resistant to change, yet “[i]n some cases organizations may be compelled to conform to demands or alter existing practices as a result of coercive pressure from powerful actors within their environment.” For example, Sociologist Kevin Stainback and co-authors found that the rate of integration for women into male dominated workplaces between 1966 and 2002 coincided with the aggressiveness of federal EEO regulatory agencies, suggesting, “some forms of legal and regulatory pressure provide a stronger incentive to modify behavior and organizational routines than others.” Another body of research conducted by scholars, such as Emilio Castilla, finds that the combination of greater transparency and accountability at the employer level are associated with decreased pay gaps.

State Progress

Public policies are helping us to increase employer accountability and transparency and move from an individual complaint-based framework to one where responsibility to find and address pay inequities lies with the employer. Significant progress has been made in other countries recently to flip the burden, with Iceland and the U.K. building on the history of EU (particularly Nordic) countries to require companies to analyze and report their data.

The Obama era EEOC pay data collection rolled back by the Trump administration would move the US in the same direction. While this federal action remains on hold, US states have and are moving ahead, if in more limited ways, to increase accountability and transparency at the employer level.

• In New Jersey, under a bill widely believed to be headed for the newly elected Democratic Governor’s desk for signature, state contractors will be mandated to report to the Commissioner of Labor and Workforce Development information on the gender, race, job title, occupational category, and total compensation of every one of its New Jersey employees working on a state contract.
• In New York, Executive Order 162 , adopted in 2017, requires state contractors and their subcontractors to submit job title and salary for each employee working on a contract, in addition to the equal employment opportunity information (such as sex, race, and ethnicity) already required.
• A new Massachusetts law creates an affirmative defense (negating liability) to wage discrimination claims for an employer that has (1) completed a self-evaluation of its pay practices that is “reasonable in detail and scope in light of the size of the employer” within the three years prior to commencement of the action; and (2) made “reasonable progress” toward eliminating pay differentials uncovered by the evaluation.
• A Minnesota law , adopted in 2014, requires the CEO of companies receiving a state contract to certify that they are meeting the requirements of state and federal equal pay laws and share information about their compensation system.

More than a dozen states introduced or adopted equal pay measures in recent years. While perhaps unsurprising in democratically controlled states like New York, California and most recently (possibly) New Jersey, but we’ve also seen bi-partisan support for measures like these in Massachusetts and Maryland where Republican Governors signed equal pay bills into law.

The growing collection of state reforms has lawyers encouraging employers to “take steps” to limit risk in an evolving legal landscape. Law 360 quotes one: “Employers have two choices. They can react on a state-by-state basis — and I wouldn’t even say react — and be forced to scramble … or they can choose to get proactive and strategic in their approach.” In this vein, many lawyers are also encouraging pay audits: “The spread of pay equity laws should also have employers considering pay audits, which can expose the unexplainable gaps that many of the new laws target.” State laws are creating a new regulatory context within which employers operate nationally, driving a change in “standard” employment practice. This is just what organizational and pay gap scholarship suggests is necessary to achieve change.

Maybe next year, Equal Pay Day will come in March instead of April.

–Debra Fitzpatrick co-directs the Center on Women, Gender & Public Policy at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota

–photo by tax credits.

HUMPHREY SCHOOL OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS

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Equal Pay Act

By: History.com Editors

Updated: July 28, 2023 | Original: November 30, 2017

The Equal Pay Act is a labor law that prohibits gender-based wage discrimination in the United States. Signed by President Kennedy in 1963 as an amendment to the Fair Labor Standards Act, the law mandates equal pay for equal work by forbidding employers from paying men and women different wages or benefits for doing jobs that require the same skills and responsibilities. The bill was among the first laws in American history aimed at reducing gender discrimination in the workplace.

The Equal Pay Act was an effort to correct a centuries-old problem of gender-based wage discrimination.

Women made up a quarter of the American workforce by the early 20th century, but they were traditionally paid far less than men, even in cases where they performed the same job. In some states, female workers were also forced to contend with laws that restricted their working hours or prohibited them from working at night.

Efforts to correct the wage gap escalated during World War II , when scores of American women entered factory jobs in place of men who had enlisted in the military. In 1942, for example, the National War Labor Board endorsed policies to provide equal pay in instances where women were directly replacing male workers.

Three years later in 1945, the U.S. Congress introduced the Women’s Equal Pay Act, which would have made it illegal to pay women less than men for work of “comparable quality and quantity.” The measure failed to pass, however, and despite campaigns by women’s groups, little progress was made on pay equity during the 1950s.

By 1960, women still earned less than two-thirds of what their male counterparts were paid.

The Equal Pay Act of 1963

Calls for a federal equal pay law coalesced in the early 1960s during the administration of President John F. Kennedy .

Esther Peterson, head of the Women’s Bureau of the Department of Labor, was a vocal supporter of the proposed legislation, as was former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt , who chaired Kennedy’s Presidential Commission on the Status of Women. Representatives Katharine St. George and Edith Green helped lead the charge for a bill in Congress.

Despite the opposition of powerful business groups such as the Chamber of Commerce and the Retail Merchants Association , Congress passed the Equal Pay Act in 1963 as an amendment to the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938.

In its final form, the Equal Pay Act mandates that employers cannot award unequal wages or benefits to men and women working jobs that require “equal skill, effort, and responsibility, and which are performed under similar working conditions.”

The law also includes guidelines for when unequal pay is permitted, specifically on the basis of merit, seniority, workers’ quality or quantity of production and other factors not determined by gender.

The Equal Pay Act was among the first federal laws in American history to address gender discrimination. In signing it into law on June 10, 1963, Kennedy praised it as a “significant step forward,” but acknowledged that “much remains to be done to achieve full equality of economic opportunity” for women.

Among other things, Kennedy stressed the need for child day care centers to support working mothers.

Other Equal Pay Laws

Following the passage of the Equal Pay Act, several other laws were enacted with the aim of reducing employment discrimination.

Perhaps the most important was Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 , which banned employers from discriminating on the basis of “race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.”

The Educational Amendment of 1972, meanwhile, expanded the reach of the Equal Pay Act to include white-collar executive, professional and administrative jobs—categories that had been exempted under the original law.

Other important gender equity employment laws include the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978, which strengthened protections for pregnant workers; and 2009’s Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which reduced time restrictions on wage discrimination complaints.

Under the regulations of the Equal Pay Act, employees who believe they are being discriminated against can either file a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission or directly sue their employer in court. Combined with increased education and career opportunities for women, these regulations have been credited with helping to narrow the gender wage gap in the United States.

Nevertheless, studies show that women are still paid less than men on average. Estimates vary, but according to a study from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, full-time women workers in 2016 were paid 82 cents for every dollar men earned.

The Equal Pay Act of 1963. U.S. Equal Opportunity Employment Commission. Facts About Equal Pay and Compensation Discrimination. U.S. Equal Opportunity Employment Commission. Work in America: An Encyclopedia of History, Policy, and Society, Volume One. Edited by Carl E. Van Horn and Herbert A. Schaffner. Equal Pay Act of 1963. National Park Service. Inch by Inch: Gender Equity Since the Civil Rights Act of 1964. By Mary E. Guy and Vanessa M. Fenley. The History of the Battle for Equal Pay for American Women. Time Magazine.

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The Two-Way

Equal pay for equal work: not even college helps women.

Korva Coleman

Barnard College graduates listen to President Barack Obama at commencement ceremonies on May 14, 2012. Richard Drew/AP hide caption

Barnard College graduates listen to President Barack Obama at commencement ceremonies on May 14, 2012.

A startling new report finds freshly graduated college women will likely face this hurdle when entering the work world: they're worth less than equally educated men.

The American Association of University Women is releasing a new study that shows when men and women attend the same kind of college, pick the same major and accept the same kind of job, on average, the woman will still earn 82 cents to every dollar that a man earns.

The study , called Graduating to a Pay Gap , points out that job choices may initially explain the problem. For example, many women choose lower paying industries, such as teaching or social sciences, while men select jobs in science and technical industries, which pay more.

So, as the Washington Post notes, the authors tried to make everything as similar as possible . They tracked graduates with identical collegiate experiences, limited familiarity with the work world, and those who didn't have spouses or children.

But the wage gap persisted.

The study found that in teaching, female college graduates earned 89 percent of what men did. In business, women earned 86 percent compared to men. In sales occupations, women earned 77 percent of what men took home.

Why would equally educated women and men with similar life experiences bring home very different paychecks?

There are a few reasons cited. One is potential gender discrimination, according to the authors, who say more women are filing complaints about their work condition. "Experimental evidence confirms that many people continue to hold biases against women in the workplace, especially those who work in traditionally male fields."

There's another, intriguing reason that women could earn less: they don't like to negotiate their salaries, or they're unable to do so. "Negotiating a salary can make a difference in earnings, and men are more likely than women to negotiate their salaries. In part, this difference may reflect women's awareness that employers are likely to view negotiations by men more favorably than negotiations by women," the authors write.

The wage disparities mean women have more trouble paying bills, especially paying back college loans. In 2009, about 47 percent of women paid more than eight percent of earnings toward student loan debt compared with 39 percent of men, according to the AAUW. The authors say these numbers have gone up since then.

Journalism professor Michele Weldon nails the problem in an essay for al Jazeera . She's writing recommendation letters for several of her female students graduating from Northwestern University. While praising each student's achievements, Weldon is thinking of adding these lines to each letter :

"I respectfully request that you offer her the same salary as a male candidate with her qualifications. If your company already has this gender balanced practice, I applaud you for your fairness."

Among the AAUW authors' recommendations: Congress should adopt new laws beefing up federal equal pay laws. And they urge women to pay attention to their own life choices, and recognize the long term implications when they decide on college majors and professions.

• American Association of University Women
• wage equity

Women, Work, and Wages: Equal Pay for Jobs of Equal Value (1981)

Chapter: 5 conclusions.

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Conclusions This report has been concerned with two questions: To what extent does the fact that women and minorities are on the average paid less than nonminonty men resect discn~runation In the way jobs are com- pensated? If wage discrimination exists, what can be done about it? On the basis of a review of the evidence, our judgment is that there is substantial discrimination in pay. Specific instances of discrimination are neither easily identified nor easily remedied, because the widespread concentration of women and m~nonties into low-pay~ng jobs makes it 6~iCU]t to distinguish discriminator from nondiscn~nato~ mm~-- nents of compensation. One approach, which needs further development but shows some promise, is to use existing job evaluation plans as a standard for comparing the relative worth of jobs. This chapter summarizes the endence leading to these conclusions. reviewing this material three considerations should be kept In mind. First, discnmination, as the term is used In this report, does not imply Intent but refers only to outcome. Wage discriIIiination exists insofar as workers of one sex, race, or ethnic group are paid less than workers of another sex, race, or ethnic group for doing work that Is of "oompa- rable," that is, equal, worth to their employer. Second, the report has focused most intensively on sex discrimination because the issue of comparable worth arises largely in connection with job segregation, the propensity for men and women and for m~nonty and nonminonty workers to hold different sorts of jobs, and job seg- regation is more pronounced by sex than by race or ethnicity. Moreover, 91

92 WOMEN. WORK, AND WAGES while most available data are at the national level, minonties, because of their numbers and geographical distribution, are more likely to be concentrated in particular occupations at a local level. We have therefore not been able to examine differentials by race or ethnic group with the same procedures we used to examine differentials by sex. In addition, most of the available studies of patterns of employment within firms refer to differences between men and women. Finally, the available analyses relating to the relative worth of jobs pertain almost entirely to sex discrimination. In this context, the fact that we focus mainly on discnmination based on sex should not be interpreted to mean that the committee has judged discrimination based on race or ethnicity to be of lesser importance. Third, we have not been able to make.any assessment of what the social and economic consequences may be of implementing wage policies based on the principle of equal pay for jobs of equal worth. This is an extremely complex question, with no clear answers, which goes well beyond the charge to the committee. We do, however, want to call attention to the need to give careful thought to the possible impact of implementation of a policy of equal pay for jobs of equal worth on the economic viability of firms as well as on employment opportunities for women and minonties. THE EXTENT AND THE SOURCES OF PAY DIFFERENTIALS It is well established that in the United States today women earn less than men and minority men earn less than nonminonty men. Among year-round full-time workers, the annual earnings of white women in the late 1970s averaged less than 60 percent of those of white men, while the earnings of black men averaged 7~75 percent of those of white men. Such differential earnings patterns have existed for many decades. They may arise In part because women and minority men are paid less than white men for doing the same (or very similar) jobs within the same firm, or in part because the job structure is substantially segregated by sex, race, and ethnic~ty and the jobs held mainly by women and minority men pay less than the jobs held mainly by nonminonty men. Since passage of the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and Title VI! of the 1964 civil Rights Act, legal remedies have been av~ilabic for the first source of wage differentials. Although the oommittcc recognizes that instances of unequal pay for the same work have not been entirely eliminated,

Conclusions 93 we believe that they are probably not now the major source of differ · . cnces in earnings. With respect to the second source of wage differentials, the disparate distnbution of workers among jobs and the concentration of women and minority men in low-paying jobs, the data are cigar. Women and minorities are differentially concentrated not only by occupation but also by industry, by firm, and by division within firms. Moreover, the cadence shows that this differential concentration has persisted, at least with respect to women, over a substantial period of time. In the face of this differential concentration, then, the question of whether pay differentials are discriminatory can be stated quite simply: Would the low-pay~ng jobs be low-paying regardless of who held them, or are they low-paying because of the sex, race, or ethnic composition of their incumbents? To be able to state the question simply, however, is not to be able to answer it simply. In the committee's judgment, a correct response recognizes that both elements account for observed earnings differen- dals. Our economy is structured so that some jobs will inevitably pay less than others, and the fact that many such jobs are disproportionately filled by women and minorities may reflect differences in qualifications, interests, traditional roles, and similar factors; or it may reflect exclu- sionary practices with regard to hiring and promotion; or it may reflect a combination of both. However, several types of ewdence support our judgment that it is also true in many instances that jobs held mainly by women and minonties pay less at least In part because Hey are held mainly by women and minorities. First, the differentials In average pay for jobs held mainly by women and those held mainly by men persist when the characteristics of jobs thought to affect their value and the characteristics of workers thought to affect their productivity are held constant. Second, prior to the legislation of the last two decades, dif- fcrentials in pay for men and women and for nunonties and nonm~nor- ities were open acceptable and were, in fact, prevalent. Tbc tradition embodied in such practices was built into wage structures, and its effects continue to influence these structures. Finely, at the level of the specific firm, several studies show that women's jobs are paid less on die average than men's jobs with the same scores denved from job evaluation plans. The e~dence is not complete or conclusive, but the consistency of the results in many different job categories and ~ several diffcrcut Apes Of studies, the sue of the pay differentials (even after worker and job characteristics have been taken into account), and the lack of endence for alternative explanations strongly suggest that wage discrimination is widespread.

94 WOMEN. WORK, AND WAGES IDENTIFYING AND ELIMINATING PAY DISCRIMINATION The identification and correction of particular instances of pay dis- cnmination are, however, not easy tasks. One procedure that has been suggested is to compare the actual rates of pay of jobs with the relative worth of jobs; wage discrimination would be suspected whenever jobs are not paid in accordance with their relative worth. This relative (or comparable) worth approach in turn requires a generally acceptable standard of job worth and a feasible procedure for measuring the relative worth of jobs. In our judgment no universal standard of job worth exists, both because any definition of the "relative worth" of jobs is in part a matter of values and because, even for a particular definition, problems of measurement are likely. One approach to the relative worth of jobs avoids the issue of values by equating the worth of jobs with existing pay rates. In this approach, no comparable worth strategy is needed to adjust the pay rates of jobs, because the pay rates themselves renect the relative worth of jobs. The belief that existing pay differentials between jobs provide a valid meas- ure of the relative worth of jobs depends on the view that the operation of labor markets is freely competitive and that pay differentials primarily reflect differences in individual productivity and are not substantially influenced by discrimination. While there is a good deal of controversy about the nature of labor markets, in our view the operation of labor markets can be better understood as reflecting a variety of institutions that limit competition with respect to workers and wages and tend to perpetuate whatever discrimination exists. As a result of these institu- tional features of labor markets, existing wage rates do not in our judg- ment provide a measure of the relative worth of jobs that avoids dis · · ~ cnmluatlon. Several of these institutional features are inherent to the current op- eration of labor markets and cannot easily be altered. Substantial in- vestment in training makes it difficult for workers to shift from one occupation to another in search of higher pay. Moreover, even within specific occupations, workers are not generally free to sell their labor to the highest bidder; they are constrained by geographical location and imperfect information as well as by institutional arrangements designed to encourage the stability of the work force by putting a premium on seniority. Nor do employers generally seek labor on the open market; a large Faction of all jobs are filled through interval promotions or transfers. Finally, both the supply of and demand for labor and the pay rates offered are strongly affected by still other force~particularly

Conclusions 9S union contracts and governmental regulations. Whenever jobs are rel- atively insulated from market forces, traditional differences In pay rates tend to be perpetuated over time. Hence, insofar as differences in pay between jobs ever did incorporate discriminatory elements, they tend to, be perpetuated. JOB EVALUATION PLANS Although no universal standard of job worth exists, job evaluation plans do provide standards and measures of job worth that are used to estimate the relative worth of jobs within many liens. In job evaluation plans, pay ranges for a job are based on estimates of the worth of jobs according to such criteria as the skill, effort, and responsibility required by the job and the working conditions under which it is performed. Pay for an individual, within the pay range, is set by the worker's charac- tenstics, such as credentials, senionty, productivity, and quality of job performance. Job evaluation plans vary from firm to firm; both the mtena established and the compensable factors and relative weights used as measures of the criteria differ somewhat from plan to plan. In our judgment job evaluation plans provide measures of job worth that, under certain circumstances, may be used to discover and reduce wage discrimination for persons covered by a given plan. Job evaluation plans provide a way of systematically rewarding jobs for their content- for the skill, effort, and responsibility they entail and the conditions under which the' are performed. By making the criteria of compensation explicit and by applying the criteria consistently, it is probable that pay differentials resulting from traditional stereotypes regarding the value of "women's works' or work customanly done by minorities wail be reduced. But several aspects of the methods generally used in such plans raise questions about their ability to establish comparable worth. First, job evaluation plans typically ensure rough conformity between the meas- ured worth of jobs and actual wages by allowing actual wages to deter- m~ne the weights of job factors used in the plans. Insofar as differentials associated with sex, race, or ethnicity are incorporated in actual wages, this procedure will act to perpetuate them. Statistical techniques exist that may be able to generate job worth scores from which components of wages associated with sex, race, or ethnicity have been at least partly removed; they should be further developed. Second, many firms use different job evaluation plans for different Apes of jobs. Since in most firms women and minority men are con- oentrated in jobs with substantially different tasks from those of jobs

96 WOMEN, WORK, AND WAGES held by nonminority men, a plan that covers all jobs would be necessary in order to compare wages of women, minority men, and nonminor~ty men. The selection of compensable factors and their weights in such a plan may be quite difficult, however, because factors appropriate for one type of job are not necessarily appropriate for all other types. Nevertheless, experiments with firm-wide plans might be useful in mak- ~ng explicit the relative weights of compensable factors, especially since they are already used by some firms. Finally, it must be recognized that there are DO definitive tests of the "fairness" of the choice of compensable factors and the relative weights given to them. The process is inherently judgmental and its success in generating a wage structure that is deemed equitable depends on achiev- ~ng a consensus about factors and their weights among employers and employees. Tat ~.J~1~ 4 __ ~ · _1 ~ ~e _ ~ · ~ ~ ~ ~ no u~ve~opment aria Implementation of a Job evaluation plan is often a lengthy and costly process. The underdeveloped nature of the tech- nology involved, particularly the lack of systematic testing of assump- tions, does not justify the universal application of such plans. In the committee's judgment, however, the plans have a potential that deserves further experimentation and development.

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Equal Pay for Equal Work

The Equal Pay Act of 1963, amending the Fair Labor Standards Act, protects against wage discrimination based on sex. 1 The Equal Pay Act (EPA) protects individuals of all sexes.

All forms of compensation are covered, including salary, overtime pay, bonuses, life insurance, vacation and holiday pay, cleaning or gasoline allowances, hotel accommodations, reimbursement for travel expenses, and benefits. If there is an inequality in wages between people of different sexes who perform substantially equal jobs, employers must raise wages to equalize pay but may not reduce the wages of other individuals.

What is Required to Substantiate an Equal Pay Act Claim?

There are several elements that must be met in compensation discrimination complaints under the Equal Pay Act. The jobs being compared must require substantially equal skill, effort, and responsibility and be performed under similar working conditions within the same establishment.

Skill : Measured by factors such as the experience, ability, education, and training required to perform the job. The issue is what skills are required for the job, not what skills the individual employees may have.

Effort : The amount of physical or mental exertion needed to perform a job.

Responsibility : The degree of accountability required to perform the job.

Working Conditions : This encompasses two factors: (1) physical surroundings like temperature, fumes, and ventilation; and (2) hazards.

Establishment : The prohibition against compensation discrimination under the EPA applies only to jobs within an establishment. An establishment is a distinct physical place of business rather than an entire business or enterprise consisting of several places of business. In some circumstances, physically separate places of business may be treated as one establishment. For example, if a central administrative unit hires employees, sets their compensation, and assigns them to separate work locations, the separate work sites can be considered part of one establishment.

"Equal" work does not mean identical jobs; rather, they must be "substantially equal" in overall job content, even if the position titles are different. In order to be considered substantially equal, the job duties must be "closely related" or "very much alike." Thus, minor differences in the job duties, or the skill, effort, or responsibility required for the jobs will not render the work unequal. An agency may have a defense if compensation is based on a seniority system, merit system, systems which measure earnings by quantity or quality of production, or any factor other than sex.

Reporting Violations

A DOL employee who believes that they have an equal pay claim should contact an Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) counselor at the Civil Rights Center (CRC) within 45 days of the event or action they believe is discriminatory. Under the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, however, the 45-day requirement to contact an EEO counselor is renewed each time an individual is allegedly paid wages, benefits, or other compensation less than someone from another protected class performing substantially similar duties.

A federal employee also has the right to file an EPA suit in federal district court without exhausting internal administrative remedies. The time limit for filing an EPA case in court is two years from the day the last discriminatory paycheck was received or, in the case of a willful violation, within three years. Filing a complaint with CRC under the EPA does not extend the time limit for filing in federal district court.

Any individual who files an equal pay claim, or assists an individual in filing an equal pay claim is protected against unlawful retaliation by their employer. This protection extends to unlawful retaliation by an employer against an individual for opposing employment practices that allegedly discriminate based on compensation or for filing a discrimination complaint, testifying, or participating in any way in an investigation, proceeding, or litigation under the Equal Pay Act. For purposes of complaints filed with CRC, unlawful retaliation is defined as an adverse employment action by the employer, such as demotion or termination, which is harmful to the point that it could discourage or dissuade a reasonable worker from making or supporting a complaint of discrimination.

To file a complaint with CRC:

• Names of EEO counselors appear on posters in DOL buildings, and on DOL’s LaborNet website.
• Phone: (202) 693-6500 (voice);
• 7-1-1 (relay)
• Email: Video Relay (877) 708-5797;

For additional information on the federal sector EEO process in general:

• CRC website: https://www.dol.gov/agencies/oasam/centers-offices/civil-rights-center/internal
• EEOC website: https://www.eeoc.gov/federal-sector/overview-federal-sector-eeo-complaint-process

For additional information on equal pay claims generally, see:

• EEOC page on equal pay and compensation discrimination
• EEOC Questions and Answers About the Equal Pay Act
• EEOC: Equal Pay Act of 1963 and Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009

1 Since passing the EPA, Congress has expanded federal protection against compensation discrimination through additional laws, including Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) of 1967, and Section 501 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. These laws also prohibit compensation discrimination on the bases of race, color, national origin, religion, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, lactation, abortion, and related medical conditions and procedures; sex stereotyping; sexual orientation; gender identity; gender expression; and intersex conditions), age (over 40), marital status, political affiliation and disability. However, these laws have different filing deadlines and standards of proof from the Equal Pay Act.

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Unequal pay for women: 'I was told men should make more'

Guardian US and ProPublica readers share their stories of finding out that they were paid less than their male colleagues

• Equal pay fact sheet: beyond the gender gap of ‘77 cents for every dollar’

Lilly Ledbetter had worked at Goodyear for years before someone slipped her a note telling her that she was making a lot less money than other men at her seniority level. Others might learn it through gossip, or through a stray pay stub.

Working women all over the US have had their own equal pay awakenings, when they realized their salaries lagged those of others who had the same qualifications. The knowledge can be a shock.

One thing is clear, however: most American women are still not getting paid as much as their male colleagues.

“Women against feminism” – a viral social media campaign that sprang up this month – isn’t purely an American phenomenon. When Guardian US and ProPublica asked for your equal pay awakenings , one of our British readers, Juliette, 45, insisted that she too was “sick of being made out to be a victim simply because I am a woman. I chose to have children and be their primary carer. I am not underpaid or a victim.”

Yet her annual pay is £5,000, or $8,473, less than that of the men in her office. Her explanation? It is not discrimination, just an effect of her having a child and needing flexible hours. “It is not a criticism of my abilities and I do not think all women are discriminated against,” she wrote.

The truth, unfortunately, is that women have been and still are paid less even if they do not take time off to have a child or need flexible hours. They earn, on average, about 77 cents for every dollar that a man earns . In span of a year, they make $11,500 less than their male counterparts.

Being underpaid doesn’t automatically make you a victim. It’s an alert to stop being one. Most women who have discovered unequal pay have stood up for themselves, paving way for other women in their company. Some quit to prove that they deserve to be treated the same as their male co-workers. We all know the statistic that about 57% of men ask for their raises. For women, that number was 7%.

Yet women who do raise the subject of salary find that asking is not enough. Often times, they are told to take it or leave it. Frequently, even when given raises, their new pay still comes short of that of their male coworkers.

While that might be enough to discourage some from trying, women have to keep asking for raises and for higher pay. Why? Because men don’t hesitate to ask.

Here are the stories of women who had equal pay awakenings.

Margaret, 35, Los Angeles, California

Pay difference: $5.50 versus $7 an hour

I was a cashier at an Italian restaurant in high school in the early 90s. I worked with a boy, also in high school, and learned he made more than me when we compared pay checks one day. Neither of us had any idea that we were being paid differently for the exact same job. I complained to the boss, one of the owners of the restaurant. At first, he tried to justify it by saying the boy was a grade older than me. Finally, he admitted that he just thought boys should be paid more. End of story. I was infuriated.

Jenny, 29, London

Pay difference: 15,000 pounds

I had always thought the job I did and the job my colleague did were equal. In fact I often covered work for him and very often helped him out, because it was important for the good of the team. He left unexpectedly and it was only when the job was advertises that I realised that his pay had been so much higher, all the time.

I talked to my manager who explained that my colleague was paid more because he had been at the organisation longer. I said I thought we should have a more similar wage at least (not a 15,000-pound difference) because if anything, I contributed more. In the end I did leave for a better (and better-paid) job.

Jane, 67, Lynnwood, Virginia

Pay difference: Health Insurance

[Forty-five years ago], when asking my boss for insurance for myself and my child, I was informed that males in the company were married, so they got family insurance, but I was female and not married so I got squat. I repeated what my boss said back to him to see how it sounded to him. He shook his head and self-righteously said: ‘yes, a man with kids gets insurance but not a woman with a child.’ I was shocked and felt demeaned.

Cassandra, 52, San Francisco, California

Pay difference: $3,000 a year

My husband and I graduated together and got the same job at two different companies. I was hired a few weeks before he was. In his final interview, he mentioned I was being paid $33,000, so his company bumped my husband’s pay up to $36,000 so he would be earning more than I was. I started at my company at the same time and for the same salary as a new male graduate – but the company advised him to start a day before me so he would always have seniority over me.

Erin, 26, UK

Pay difference: $20,000

I knew for a while that others were paid at a higher rate compared to me. I just accepted that and I don’t really know why. I guess I thought I just wasn’t as good and others were slightly more experienced. I am an engineer and have a masters degree in my subject (and a lot of student debt to go with it), this is necessary for my job role, and this is my first company after graduating. I am the only female engineer. Others in the same role as me were less qualified, studying part time and having their fees paid for by the company, and also getting at least 1 day per week study leave. It was when I found out that their study day was not unpaid but paid at their normal day rate that I got angry and upset. I was fully qualified working 5 days a week. They were unqualified, earning 50% more than me and working only 4 days per week. I asked for a raise to match the others’ day rates. I stated my case and said it was not fair and that I would leave if it was not resolved. I was nearly fobbed off with a much smaller raise but I said again that I would not take anything less than being equal to the men. My supervisor agreed reluctantly.

Kathleen, 59, San Francisco, California

Pay difference: $1 an hour (in 1975, that was a lot)

How did you find out you were being paid less? Compared rates with male employees.

We worked on the paint crew of our university’s Physical Plant Department one summer. The other gal and I asked for an interview with the department manager. We laid out our case. The other gal was a lot feistier than I and angered the manager. He said if we want a raise we have to prove we deserve to be paid the same as the men. So we had to paint an entire house without the assistance of any males. We did it.

Samantha, 25, New York, New York

Pay difference: $7,000 a year

My supervisor was leaving for a new opportunity and we were out for drinks. After some shake-ups on our team, I had been given a lot of new responsibility and a fancy new title to go along with it. My supervisor encouraged me to ask for an equivalent of her salary – $55,000/year compared to my $45,000. I was unsure of my value at the company when a colleague – recent college grad as of May 2013 and in the most entry-level position at our company – piped up to say that he couldn’t believe I was only making $45,000 being there nearly a year with two years of experience under my belt because his starting salary was $52,000. I approached my boss, the only woman in a leadership position at the company, and mentioned that with my supervisor leaving, my role changing and my responsibilities growing, I’d like to be financially compensated for that. She was caught off guard and said she’d bring it up to the CEO. Two weeks later she hugged me because she had gotten me a raise. The company thought I was worth 9% more than what I was making, putting my annual salary at $48,000 – still $4,000 less than the newest person in our company.

J, 42, New York, New York

Pay difference: $15,000 a year

After 14 years at my workplace, I got a promotion. A male colleague who’d been at the company for four years had also just received the same promotion. I asked him how much he was earning and he graciously told me: it was $15,000 more than they were offering me. Plus his annual bonus was higher: 15% of his salary versus 10% for me. I was still in the process of negotiating my pay, so I asked for more. I was told no, take it or leave it. I took it, but I now feel much less loyal to this place.

Laura, 29, Durham, North Carolina

Pay difference: $1 an hour

I was being paid $15 an hour and had been there for a year, and realized that a new, entirely inexperienced male peer had been started at $16 an hour. I talked to my boss. When I complained, she raised my pay to be equal to his, even though I had been there a year longer than him. I quit shortly after. I have never asked for a raise. Once I quit the job, they offered me $3 more an hour to stay, going from $16 an hour to $19 an hour. I was insulted that they hadn’t given me a raise in two years when they were able to offer something like that on the fly. I still quit the job.

Robin, 49, Laurel, Maryland

A new grad male, doing the same job as myself and another woman both employed in the same position for about 10 years, was offered more money than either of us. I get raises when asking, but the man didn’t ask for or negotiate the higher salary. He didn’t know he was making so much more. We talked about filing a complaint but both of us ended up leaving the position (as did he).

Pay discrimination can go both ways:

Dan, 30, Sydney, Australia

I found out I was being paid significantly less than my female colleagues when assisting in the recruitment of colleagues. I am the only man in a team of 11. My hiring managers were all women and were sexist. [I] told my manager I identified it. Ask for an explanation of the disparity. When they claimed budget was making it hard to close [the] identified gap, I said that was understandable, noted that my grievance was raised under the formal grievance policy, and that they were obliged to formally respond – [I] mentioned discrimination. One month later I was moved to pay parity. Women need to organise as a class to effect change. The problem clearly impacts men as well – on nowhere near the same scale though. Use us as allies.

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