Equal Pay Act Of 1963
The Equal Pay Act of 1963 is a United States federal law amending the Fair Labor Standards Act, aimed at abolishing wage disparity based on sex (see Gender pay gap). It was signed into law on June 10, 1963 by John F. Kennedy as part of his New Frontier Program. In passing the bill, Congress denounces sex discrimination for the following reasons:
- It depresses wages and living standards for employees necessary for their health and efficiency;
- it prevents the maximum utilization of the available labor resources
- it tends to cause labor disputes, thereby burdening, affecting, and obstructing commerce;
- it burdens commerce and the free flow of goods in commerce; and
- it constitutes an unfair method of competition.
The law provides (in part) that:
- 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
Read more about Equal Pay Act Of 1963: Background, Congressional Intent, Impact
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“By now, legions of tireless essayists and op-ed columnists have dressed feminists down for making such a fuss about entering the professions and earning equal pay that everyone’s attention has been distracted from the important contributions of mothers working at home. This judgment presumes, of course, that prior to the resurgence of feminism in the ‘70s, housewives and mothers enjoyed wide recognition and honor. This was not exactly the case.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)
“Your children don’t have equal talents now and they won’t have equal opportunities later in life. You may be able to divide resources equally in childhood, but your best efforts won’t succeed in shielding them from personal or physical crises. . . . Your heart will be broken a thousand times if you really expect to equalize your children’s happiness by striving to love them equally.”
—Marianne E. Neifert (20th century)
“Chance is the one thing you can’t buy.... You have to pay for it and you have to pay for it with your life, spending a lot of time, you pay for it with time, not the wasting of time but the spending of time.”
—Robert Doisneau (b. 1912)
“Because of these convictions, I made a personal decision in the 1964 Presidential campaign to make education a fundamental issue and to put it high on the nation’s agenda. I proposed to act on my belief that regardless of a family’s financial condition, education should be available to every child in the United States—as much education as he could absorb.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)