Fair+Pay+Act

Equal Pay Act



What is it? In 1963 the Equal Pay Act (EPA) was established by Barbara Castle to help working women receive equal pay for the same jobs that men were being paid more for. In 1963 when John F. Kennedy signed the EPA, women earned about 59 cents for every dollar earned by a man. Even in 2007, 44 years after the act was signed, women earned 77 cents for every dollar earned by a man. This is an improvement but it still needs to be changed. If the money that women should have made in their careers was to be added up it would fall between $700,000 and $2 million through the course of her entire working life. What impact did it have on the women’s movement? This act gave women a chance to show men and other women in the United States that even though women were able to have jobs amongst men that they were still being paid much less than men for the same jobs. It gave working women a chance to fight for what they earned and that men were treating them differently even though it seemed that they were being fair and equal. This act helped encourage women to work and it allowed labor disputes to dissolve between men and women. The pay gap has become smaller but there is still a large difference between the sexes.

This is the actual document

"No employer having employees subject to any provisions of this section shall discriminate, within any establishment in which such employees are employed, between employees on the basis of sex by paying wages to employees in such establishment at a rate less than the rate at which he pays wages to employees of the opposite sex in such establishment for equal work on jobs the performance of which requires equal skill, effort, and responsibility, and which are performed under similar working conditions, except where such payment is made pursuant to (i) a seniority system; (ii) a merit system; (iii) a system which measures earnings by quantity or quality of production; or (iv) a differential based on any other factor other than sex:"