Impact
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, women’s salaries vis-à-vis men’s have risen dramatically since the EPA’s enactment, from 62% of men’s earnings in 1970 to 80% in 2004. Nonetheless, the EPA’s equal pay for equal work goals have not been completely achieved, as demonstrated by the BLS data and Congressional findings within the text of the proposed Paycheck Fairness Act.
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton first introduced the “Paycheck Fairness Act” on April 20, 2005, which, among other provisions, proposes to amend the EPA’s fourth affirmative defense to permit only bona fide factors other than sex that are job-related or serve a legitimate business interest. Representative Rosa DeLauro first introduced an identical bill in the House of Representatives on the same day. On January 29, 2009, President Barack Obama signed into law the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which overturned the holding of a Supreme Court case, Ledbetter v. Goodyear, regarding the applicable statute of limitations. This bill, providing that each gender-unequal paycheck is a new violation of the law, was the first signing of the Obama Presidency and came almost forty-five years after the Equal Pay Act.
However, a 2007 Department of Labor study cautioned against overzealous application of the EPA without closer examination of possible reasons for pay discrepancies. This study notes, for example, that men as a group earn higher wages in part because men dominate blue collar jobs, which are more likely to require cash payments for overtime work; in contrast, women comprise over half of the salaried white collar management workforce that is often exempted from overtime laws. In summary, the study stated:
- Although additional research in this area is clearly needed, this study leads to the unambiguous conclusion that the differences in the compensation of men and women are the result of a multitude of factors and that the raw wage gap should not be used as the basis to justify corrective action. Indeed, there may be nothing to correct. The differences in raw wages may be almost entirely the result of the individual choices being made by both male and female workers.
Read more about this topic: Equal Pay Act Of 1963
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