Equal Pay For Equal Work

The imperatives for securing pay equity for women’s work start with the fundamental human right

Women’s rights and feminism has been an issue in the American culture for many years. The first Woman’s Rights Convention was held in New York in 1948 after women were not able to give their opinions about slavery at Anti-Slavery Conventions (The Woman’s Rights Movement). Now, 168 years later, many people still feel that women do not have equal rights and opportunities that men do. The feminist movement is an important part of our time and people, both men and women, will keep fighting for equality between men and women.

The Equal Pay Act set in the United States in 1963 is a labor law removes the wage inequality between men and women. This was a law that was specifically designed so that everyone is required to be paid the same amount. If a man and a woman are both working the same job title in the same work place there should not be any difference in the amount of pay received. The creation of this law was much more important than many people realized, because women were completing the same jobs but offered less money because of their gender and not quality of their work.The sole purpose of the equal pay is give women the same ability to make a living as a male, which closes the gender pay gap and keeps women for being paid 78 cents on a dollar. This pay act helps hold the employer accountable for making sure no one is not being compensated for things in their job description. In this paper I will speaking about The EEOC Sues Checkers and the Phillips V. Marietta Corp which are two specific cases that shows how people have been discriminated against because of their gender, this highlights the importance of The Equal Pay Act and what it actually stands for.

The first wave of feminism began somewhere in the 1860’s and lasted to the 1920’s when the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified and women were given the right to vote.

The exact beginning of feminism cannot be known as it was a movement sparked in many parts of the United States by women that had finally reached the threshold of their patience with their maltreatment. Many believe feminism did not truly begin until the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848, but women had been resisting their lack of control far before then. Since the technical emergence of feminism in 1848, the goals of those women and men who have been and still are fighting have developed and adapted to fit into the societal norms of each respective time period.

Throughout the history of this country especially beginning in the 1800s with the women's suffrage movement, women have fought for equality. It is no secret that the role of men versus women have change immensely over the last century however some things have not changed. As a result of the unchanging or slowly evolution of equality feminism has arise.

As the century immediately following the American Revolution, the 19th century experienced a rise in feminism as it harbored the first feminist movement in America. Although some women chose to embrace their “roots” by retaining their domestic sphere of influence, many women began to show discontent with the limited number of rights women held. Soon enough, the fight for women’s rights resulted in women gaining more prominence in society.

Throughout the history of the United States, equality for all has been a highly sought-after, yet controversial aspect of American life. Whether it was the period of Native American reorganization or the destructive era of Southern slavery, it has been equality that continues to be denied to a certain group of citizens. In order to combat this, many efforts have been made to influence equality in all elements of citizen’s lives. However, in today’s society, many of these attempts have failed to be noticed, for true equality has yet to be entirely achieved. Notably, working women all over the country have been denied equal wages to that of men. Thus, condoning the use of wage discrimination against women in the workplace is unjust and inequitable because women perform many of the same jobs as men do, they are entitled to the same basic rights as the rest of society, and because laws have already been passed to illegalize wage discrimination based on gender. Both men and women in the labor force are expected of comparable tasks and performances, yet the payment that women receive as compensation remains noticeably less than that of men.

Wage discrimination is embedded in our legal system. The ongoing battle for equal pay for women dates back to the Civil War. Throughout history, men seemed as the ideal-type of employers. Men were primary the breadwinners, and women who worked at the time only pinch in money oppose to having a stable salary equivalent to their male counterparts. The job roles such as nurses, teacher, and retail sales clerk became a “traditional female” occupations. In “Here’s the History of the Battle for Equal Pay for American Women,” Charlotte Alter points out a letter sent to the editor of the New York Times on February 1869. In this letter, the writer questioned why female government officials did not have similar pay to their male colleagues: ‘Very few persons deny the justice of the principle that equal work should command equal pay without regard to the sex of the laborer.’ Even in the late 19th century in which men had far more opportunities than women, people question the inequality in regards of the workplace. The

“Imagine you 're a little girl. You 're growing up. You practice as hard as you can, with girls, with boys. You have a dream. You fight, you work, you sacrifice to get to this stage. You work as hard as anyone you know. And then you get to this stage, and you 're told you 're not the same as a boy. Almost as good, but not quite the same. Think how devastating and demoralizing that could be” Venus Williams. For years, women have worked as hard as men to get an education, get their dream job, or even get a promotion in a job they are currently at so they can earn less pay than a man and not even know it. They take on these important roles and titles as a manager or take on more jobs than they can handle to prove they are worthy as the next guy and to receive no raise or still underpaid to the guy who does not work as hard or have the same job title. However, women and men have begun to see this a problem and started to work together to make a change. Women makeup over half the workforce and are seen, if not equal, or are the breadwinner in four out of ten families (About Pay Equity & Discrimination 1). Women in the workforce should earn the same pay as men because they work hard to get an education, their race should not play into an effect, and they support a family.

A current political issue in the United States is unequal payment based on the sex of the one who is employed. Rick McKee uses he editorial cartoon, “Equal Pay,” to indirectly characterize our current president, and create some irony around the whole topic of inequality in paychecks. McKee intends to reach all possible viewers/voters to make the president appear to have some hypocrisy to create some irony surrounding the president and his people-pleasing executive orders. The moral points in this piece of artwork are: if someone wants others to change they should change first, one cannot blame their mistakes on someone else, and be humble. The main purposes of this satirical cartoon is to criticize the current president’s lack of knowledge of the issue of unequal pay going on even with those that work for him, and his attitude of a hypocrite to blame what he is in charge of on other people.

The gender wage gap is a prominent issue which is fought for in feminism today. In the past, this standard has been justified due to the fact that women were more likely to be stay-at-home moms, and were less likely to have jobs or college degrees. Today, women are getting comparable education to men, and working comparable jobs, yet the issue remains. The gender wage gap is a women’s rights issue based on the old-fashioned role of women in society which needs to be fought against and decreased in the United States during this current political and social climate.

The Equal Pay Act of 1963 has also demonstrated how much the women of our country’s past had to suffer and fight for what was right. Stupendous amounts of protests, liberations groups, and rallies were assembled to get the recognition they truly deserved and led the women in the positions they are in today. In fact, this document was established to rightfully attempt to recognize the equality the women so strongly urged for in their working environment, and to show the complete empowerment the women were capable of

Government has tackled the issue of pay equity for several decades, through a string of Acts. The issue arose as part of the discussion of civil rights in the 1960s but the conversation continues today. The concept of equal pay for equal work has philosophical roots in the doctrine of equality, where all Americans are considered to be equal under the law and entitled to equal rights. The issue of equal pay became a public policy topic as a means of enforcing this equality doctrine. This paper will discuss not only the doctrine, but the history of equal pay legislation from the Civil Rights Act to the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009.

The Guardian article “The USA women's national team are demanding equal pay. Is it realistic?” written by Beau Dure discusses the interview held by CBS’s 60 Minutes about the USA women’s national soccer team’s drive for equal pay. There have been scarce meetings between US soccer and representatives for the women’s team, and even less knowledge of what is being discussed within these meetings. As of now all that anyone knows for sure is that the women’s team current deal is coming to an end. Dure points out that the debate at hand includes all forms of equality between the US men’s team and the US women’s team; such as equality in pay, travel amenities, and field location accessibility. However, while there are many parts to this debate Dure choses to focus on the difference in pay. Dure emphasizes the difference in the payment systems, bonuses for championships, and gap between two star players that play the same position. Dure makes sure to add that this debate has been going on for a long time and not only in the US. At this moment it is unknown if they are looking for exact pay as the men’s team.