Summary: The Paycheck Fairness Act

After years of Civil Rights Movements and Pay Equity Acts, as of 2014, women still only make 79 cents to a man 's every dollar. Although the wage gap has shrunk since the 1970’s, progress has recently stalled and chances of it vanishing on its own is unlikely. The gains that American women have made towards labor market experience and skills is tremendous. In fact, women account for 47% of labor workforce and 49.3% of American jobs. But despite of women’s strides, a gender pay gap still exists. Experts suggest that it will take 100 years to close the gap at the rate employers and legislators are working to create solutions. But by allowing women to work in higher paying positions and by proposing and updating pay equity laws, the gender gap can finally be diminished.

Imagine what an extra 20%, or more, in your paycheck could do for you. Maybe it would be the difference between just scraping by and having a little discretionary income. Now, imagine being paid based on your own merit, and not some sliding scale which has historically favored men as the breadwinners of the family. Unfortunately, for most women, equal pay is still a dream. Today, as throughout history, there exists a gender pay gap where women are paid $0.79 to every dollar a man makes. Minority women make even less. Women, of course, have always known this gap exists, but they have had little power to change it.

11. Federal legislation has been enacted to protect workers against wage discrimination (e.g., Equal Pay Act of 1963, Civil Rights Acts of 1964and 1991, and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967). These laws prohibit paying male employees more than female employees unless the wage difference is justified on the basis of:

Although it is not completely congress’s fault, change is not happening fast enough. The wage gap especially feels like it is moving at a turtle’s pace considering that in the past fifty years, the gap has only closed by twenty cents. It is ridiculous that the vast majority of employers feel like they can justify giving a woman less money for doing the exact same work that a man does. As a woman myself, I cannot fathom the of idea living in a country that stands for equality, yet not getting something as simple as equal wage. If it is not my gender, it is my ethnicity, or my religion, or anything that makes me unlike the common Christian, straight, white male. Congress should make an updated version of the document, not only to help the economy, but also to show that women are just as comparable to men, in all aspects of life. All in all, I am glad that the Equal Pay Act exists. It shows that congress did want to make change on this issue and it is a pivotal document for the civil rights movement of the 1960’s. I have come to learn that the Equal Pay Act, like any other U.S. document, is very important in the history of the U.S. and its impact, although not the biggest a document has done, should still be noted as positive for the

One problem that Americans are facing is the inequality between men and women, whether it is in everyday life or in a professional atmosphere. One step that has been taken toward equality was introduced with the Equal Pay Act of 1963, signed by President John F. Kennedy. This law was the first affecting the amount of job opportunities available for women and allowing them to work in traditionally male dominated fields. On the outside, this would sound like a solution where nothing could possibly go wrong, but it is not.

Recent trends toward certain state legislatures augmenting pay equity statutes have been deemed “sweeping changes” as compared to the stagnancy of federal pay equity statutes. New York and California enacted pay equity statutes at the end of 2015 that went into effect at the beginning of 2016. A session law enacted in Massachusetts in 2016 expands that state’s pay equity provisions in “impactful” and “noteworthy” ways in comparison to other states’ laws. These three states’ significant expansions of pay equity provisions can act as templates for Kansas, which limits employees bringing wage disparity claims to comparing themselves to their counterparts only if their work is “equal” and if they work at the same “establishment.”

In the 2009 article of Modern Casting titled “Obama Signs Fair-Pay Act”, a report is given about President Obama signing his first bill into law showing his dedication to the labor agenda. It was called the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, with its primary purpose being to increase the time restrictions previously set forth for employees bringing equal pay claims against their employers. Legislated in 1963, The Equal Pay Act was put in place to decrease the pay gap between males and females. The act prohibits gender-based pay discrimination by requiring organizations to pay men and women doing the same job the same rate of pay (Gilley, 2009). But this was not limited to wages alone, also included in the Equal Pay Act are all associated pay benefits such as insurances, retirement plans, severance pay, stock options and more.

Winifred Stanley (R-NY) proposed a bill in 1944 to amend the National Labor Relations Act with no success. Then in 1950, Rep. Katharine St. George (R-NY) attempted to pass the Equal Rights Amendment though again, with no success. Notably, Katharine St. George is credited with coining the phrase “equal pay for equal work” (Cho 2013). During the second wave of feminism which began in the early 1960’s and lasted through 1990’s, emphasis was focused on passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, reproductive rights and social equality (Rampton 2015). Subsequently, in 1963 President Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act into law. Although momentum stalled between signage of the EPA and the early decade of the millennium and we have yet to pass the Equal Rights Amendment, this could change if Hilary Clinton is elected President of the United States and continues the work that Obama started. President Obama has been committed to equal rights from the beginning of his presidency; in fact, the first bill he signed into law was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pair Act of 2009. This act is an amendment to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and changed the statute of limitations for filing an equal-pay claim for pay discrimination. Prior to this law, anyone claiming discrimination was required to file within 180 days of the alleged offense, the alleged offense was formerly the first paycheck received where discrimination was claimed. Clearly this

Recently there have been concerns that there is a noticeable wage gap between workers of opposite genders that are on the same job level. Men seem to earn more than their female colleagues who are on the same level with them (Gregory). Increasing the minimum wage would level the playing ground across genders ensuring that no one is discriminated against on the basis of gender especially among low income earners. There have also been concerns regarding the discrepancies on wages of workers from different racial backgrounds despite being on the same job level. White employees are likely to be paid a higher salary than employees from other races (Hipp). Increasing the minimum wage would help to reduce this inequality and social

Adjacently, Anita Little, an author for an American feminist magazine called Ms, wrote an article titled, “It’s Not a Myth- It’s Math”, explains that the gap is not fictitious and that government involvement and public policies can help close the gap. Anita Little explains that although the Equal Pay Act of 1963 was created, there still is a need for additional support. She specifically mentions the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act in that she says that it would require, “employers to prove that wage disparities are tied solely to job and business-related needs and not gender or other factors unrelated to job performance” (7). Little mentions this because she believes that employers are secretly still paying women less than men solely because

Sommers does not believe that the unfair wage gap between men and women is authentic. Sommers assumes that there are many reasons explained the gap such as women’s decision on the type of work they do, their field of study and the time distribution for their families and the workplace. Women should not blame others for the lower pay. It is because they are less likely to take jobs that require a lot of effort and physical ability. According to an analysis from the U.S. Department of Labor, some reasons causing the wage gap is owing to the industry and occupation. During her career, a woman might have to take maternal leave which partly

Starting on March 25, 2015 in the 144th Congress, the Paycheck Fairness Act was first introduced into the legislative process to amend the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 to provide a more effective remedy to the victims of discrimination in the payment of wages on the basis of sex and other purposes. This bill is introduced because for every full-time women worker she will get only 78 cents for every dollar a man makes but women have been entering the workforce for the past 50 years and need equal pay despite their gender. Even with the Equal Pay Act in 1963 being passed, women still face the continuous impact of lower pay than men for an equal amount of work and this exists in both private and government sectors and if these pay differences

largest was in Louisiana where women only made 65% of their male counterpart’s earnings. (Bush, 2016) To address the pay gap problem, we need to examine the practices of Washington, D.C. to discover what implications were enacted to narrow the gap between men and women. Following this examination, we will be able to find ways to implement these practices nationwide. Also, legislation needs to be passed to prevent sex-based wage discrimination. "In one of his first acts in office in 2009, President Barack Obama signed into law the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which prohibits sex-based wage discrimination. However, Congress has not passed the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would make it easier for women to challenge wage disparities." (Bush) The

The Pennsylvania Senate passed an amendment to the Equal Pay Law that specified that employers and labor unions cannot require an employee not to disclose their wages and that they can’t retaliate against an employer who files a complaint or inquiry regarding wages. Local attorneys said the new amendment—if signed into law as is—would not have a huge effect on businesses in Pennsylvania because of federal laws already in place and many suggested that employers document their reasoning of any pay gaps.

After analyzing the history of the gender wage gap, the paper will now look at the current state of the issue. The percentage of female earnings compared to male earnings increased from around 60 percent in 1980 to 77 percent in 2010, according to National Compensation Survey conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (Blau and Kahn 2000). The gap was larger for African-American and Hispanic women, who earned only 70% and 61% respectively of what white men earned. As a result, April 20, 2011 was known as Equal Pay Day, which is the approximate day the average female employee would