Imagine being told that you do not need as much pay as a man because your husband is a professor and you do not need the money. This was the truth for Maxine Lampe when she addressed the school district about being paid less. Before her husband was done with graduate school, she brought the issue up with the school where she worked and was told that she could not get the head-of-household pay that men received, even though she was the breadwinner. This is not the only account of this happening. All over the country, women are getting paid less than men and being told that it’s okay. It is not okay.
Gender equality is something that has been a problem through the ages. Susan B. Anthony and many others fought for the right to vote which was granted in 1920. In 1963, President John F. Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act into law stating that no employer can discriminate based on gender. The American Association of University Women published a graph on Women’s Median Annual Earnings as a Percentage of Men’s Median Annual Earnings for Full-time, Year-round Workers, 1974-2014 and it shows that in 1974, women were paid 59% of what men were paid. The graph shows the improvements over the years and that in 2014, women were paid 79% of what men were paid. The gap has not budged since 2014. The gender pay gap has improved over the years, but it will not close until new legislation passes.
Over time, the gap has changed for the better. The gap has improved for many reasons but many of
Women’s Civil Rights has always been an issue around the world. During World War II, women began working while the men were away at war. Once the men came back, the pay wage began between men and women. According to researchers, Beth Rowen and Borgna Brunner, between 1950 and 1960, women who had worked full-time jobs only earned around 60 cents to every dollar that their male counterparts earned. It was not until June 10, 1963 that the Equal Pay Act was passed by President Kennedy making it illegal for employers to pay women less than men in the same job title. In order to further progress of pay equity, Rosa Cho from Re:Gender.org, also found that President Kennedy proposed a Civil Rights Act to prohibit
An important federal employment law that all employees and employers should be aware of is the Equal Pay Act of 1963. As conversed in week nine of class discussion and video lecture, the Equal Pay Act of 1963 ends wage disparity based on sex. The main goal of this act was to ban discrimination in wages, benefits, and pensions based the gender of an employee in any place of employment. Women traditionally earned less than men for doing similar work. The United States has had a long history of knowledge of unequal pay between men and women, but it was not until around World War II that the problem arose and women started fighting for their rights on this issue. Women have tried passing several bills to help close this pay gap throughout the 1950’s, but ended up in failure.
Women have made significant strides in society, proving themselves to be as capable as men in the workforce. However, while women are making equal contributions, men and women are not earning equal wages. Even though the Equal Pay Act was established in 1963, women continue to earn lower wages than men over half a century later. This inequality not only affects women as individuals but has a detrimental effect on the national economy. The gender wage gap in the United States should end because it is unjust; correcting it would have social and economic benefits for the U.S.
The gender pay gap in the United States forms a slightly mixed feeling. On one hand, after years of opposition to the earnings of women compared to men. There has been a large increase in women's earnings since the 1970s. The gender pay gap in the United States is measured through the female to male average yearly earnings for a full-time, year-round worker. Previously, a woman earned 77 cents for every dollar that a male gets. Since 1980, the gap has narrowed by 16.8 cents, improving from 60.2 cents to 77 cents, as stated by the Institute for Women’s Policy. The current pay gap between female and male is 82 cent for every one dollar. This growth is significant because it opposes the relative stability of the earlier incomes of a woman in 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.
One key issue that is covered by the Women’s Rights movement is shrinking the pay gap. Currently in the U.S. women earn roughly eighty cents to every full dollar earned by a man ("Pay Equity"). This accounts for the fact that the average American male
In 1942, the National War Labor Board urged employers to voluntarily equalize wage and salary rates for women to meet the wages of men. The Equal Pay act was signed in 1963, making it illegal for employers to pay unequal wages to men and women who hold the same job and do the same work, but this hasn’t changed much. Two landmark court cases served to strengthen and further define the Equal Pay Act: Schultz v. Wheaton Glass Co. (1970), U.S. Court of Appeals for
One might think that in the year 2015 that pay equality is no longer an issue in the United States. However, according to government surveys "on average full-time women earn just 78 cents for every dollar a man earns."(Did You Know) That is kind of a scary thought that after over forty years of this act being written into law that
The extensive studies conducted over the past 50 years on gender based wage gap show that even though the gap has narrowed over the years, it still irrefutably exists. The laws such as The Equal Pay Act of 1963, which prohibit gender based wage discrimination, and The Civil Rights Act, helped reduce the wage gap over the years but did not help eradicate it. Numerous studies and scholarly research continue to show the differences in the earnings of men and women, for equal work. Figure 1 shows the wage discrimination from the 1960s to the year 2015.
Even though men and women who work in the same work place doing the same exact job should be getting the same exact pay, also known as the Equal Pay Act of 1963, this matter is still a constant battle. For example, women earned 79 cents for every dollar that a man earns (whitehouse.gov). This statistic, referred to as the gender gap, has been reoccurring for decades and although the numbers have changed throughout the years, the gap
In 1963, President John F. Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act into law, and now, over 50 years later, women are still not considered equals to men. The face that men are getting paid up to 4% higher than women when they are both doing the same exact job and have the same amount of experience is ridiculous. If you think that 4% is low, let me give you an example. If you are making 70,000 dollars in a job with a 4% gender gap, then a man is making 2,800 more dollars than you.
Even though women had same jobs as men, they did not receive equal salaries in the 1940s’. In these times employed women have traditionally fought for higher salaries and better working conditions without the help of the trade unions. The campaigns of female workers were resulted the passage of the Equal Pay Act in 1970, which applied to the public and private sectors where both genders were employed in the same or similar work. As women have participated in the labour force with higher percentages, consequently their salaries have also increased. Average wages and salaries in 2010 dollars increased gradually for women through the decades, from $7,352 in 1940 to $21,323 in 2008 (Appendix 1). Conversely, male's wages peaked in 1970 at approximately
The Federal Government has been struggling for almost four decades now to close the gap between the wages of men and women. In the 1960's, women were paid approximately 60 cents for every dollar men received for their work. Although progress has been made since Congress passed the Equal Pay Act in 1963, equality has not yet been achieved. Today, thirty-six years later, women still earn only seventy-six percent of the wages of men.
Gender-based discrimination in hiring, pay, and promotion exists, despite being illegal. President John F. Kennedy, a firm believer in gender equality, signed the Equal Pay Act in 1963. This act made it illegal to pay men and women working in the same place different salaries for similar work. Even though this law is still in effect today, the wage gap continues to exist. Congress has considered and failed to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act several times. This act would benefit working women by a stricter enforcement of the Equal Pay Act and a prohibition to sex discrimination (Rios). Passing this act would ensure pay equality for women and decrease discrimination in hiring and promotions. A 2010 study conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that women earn more than men in only 4 out of 111 occupations (where data is present for comparisons) ("A Socialist Feminist Analysis of the Gender Pay Gap"). Typically jobs predominantly held by women pay less on average than jobs predominantly held by men. Women earn more college and graduate degrees than men, yet they are still paid less. If America continues to move at the same slow rate it currently is, pay equality will be reached in 2059, 44 years from now ("Pay Equity &
Equal pay for female workers has been a civil rights headline since around World War II. Women of all sorts of race have been fighting for this unfair wage gap to end for decades. Though fighting for the wage gap to vanish has been tough, women have continued to fight for their rights regardless of the punishment they could have faced. The Equal Pay Act signed by John F. Kennedy is the act that ultimately got everyone talking and it is also the Act that has helped the gap as a whole.