The Equal Pay Act
- Angela
- 22 de jan. de 2021
- 2 min de leitura
The equal pay act was one of the first laws created to decrease the gender-disparity present in the workplace environment. It was a milestone in the fight for women’s rights since the gender wage gap has been an on-going issue since 1945 when the Women’s equal pay act failed to pass. To fully comprehend the importance of the equal pay act’s passing, it is first necessary to understand concepts like the gender wage gap and how deeply this affected the feminist movement, by perpetuating the forever misogynistic idea that simply put “men are better than women”.
By the early 20th women made up a quarter of the American workforce, nevertheless, they were still paid much less than men, even in cases when they performed the same job. In some states, they even limited the number of hours women could work and prevented them from working at night. And when WW2 started, women started replacing men who had enlisted in the military, in many areas. This was actually beneficial for women, because laws like the National War Labor Board allowed them to earn as much as a man, for the same job, but only in instants where they were replacing them. Some more efforts were made to fight the gender wage gap but during the 1950s there was barely any progress made.
The urge for the Equal Pay Act came to full strength during the administration of 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. And despite the effort by major businesses to prevent the law from going anywhere, in 1963 the congress passed it as an amendment to the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. This made it illegal for employers to award different benefits or wages to men and women working jobs that require “equal skill, effort, and responsibility, and which are performed under similar working conditions.”, prohibiting gender-based discrimination.
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. This has done a significant change in the career opportunities available to women and in their overall lives. John F. Kennedy praised it as being “a significant step forward” but acknowledge that much remains to be done to achieve full equality of economic
Research sites: https://www.history.com/topics/womens-rights/equal-pay-act
Comentarios