She gathered data, built coalitions, and won over opponents in a successful campaign to bring an Equal Pay Act before Congress. According to the National Park Service, “At her urging, President Kennedy established the Presidential Commission on the Status of Women to develop recommendations for achieving equality. In 1961, Peterson was appointed as the director of the Women’s Bureau in the Department of Labor. In 1944, she became the very first lobbyist for the National Labor Relations Board, which started her path as a labor activist. One of the key activists in the fight for equal pay was Esther Peterson. Esther Peterson: The Woman Who Drafted the Equal Pay Act of 1963 Kennedy signing the Equal Pay Act of 1963. This discrepancy was the catalyst that led to John F. Yet still, they earned just $0.59 to every dollar earned by men. More and more women joined the labor force until by 1960, more than 25 million women were working and women again accounted for 37 percent of the workforce in the United States. Throughout the 1950s, multiple equal pay bills were debated in Congress, but each failed to be enacted into law. By the end of the 1940s, the number of women working outside of the home dropped to 28 percent. Job listings were published according to jobs for men and jobs for women, and sometimes identical jobs would be published for either sex, with different pay scales for each. Additionally, most companies would hire only men and companies that did continue to employ their women workers reclassified their jobs in order to pay them lower wages. Many federal and civilian policies allowed employers to replace women workers with men. In 1942, the National War Labor Board issued a General Order for men and women to earn equal pay for work that was of “comparable quality and quantity.”Īfter the war ended in 1945, women in the labor force faced huge setbacks. Unions began advocating for equal pay to prevent employers from lowering wages for men in the future. Thus, the fight against the gender wage gap began not because of the belief women deserved to earn equal pay for equal work, but because men didn’t want women taking over their jobs after the war ended. Because of the labor shortage that resulted when more men joined the military and more women took over their jobs for less pay, men began to worry they would be replaced by women permanently. This is the origin of the gender wage gap. During the war, however, acute labor shortages drove more women into the workforce until they accounted for 37 percent in 1945.Īt this point, women typically earned less than their male counterparts for the same work. Prior to the war, women accounted for less than 24 percent of the civilian workforce in the United States. The number of women in the labor force shifted dramatically after World War II. Our economy today depends on women in the labor force.” The History of Equal Pay As he signed the Act, he went on to acknowledge the road to full economic equality was long and far from over, saying, “While much remains to be done to achieve full equality of economic opportunity - for the average woman worker earns only 60 percent of the average wage for men - this legislation is a significant step forward. Kennedy made these remarks upon signing the Equal Pay Act of 1963 into law. This Act represents many years of effort by labor, management, and several private organizations unassociated with labor or management, to call attention to the unconscionable practice of paying female employees less wages than male employees for the same job.” “I am delighted today to approve the Equal Pay Act of 1963, which prohibits arbitrary discrimination against women in the payment of wages.
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