By Meghan Groob, Media Relations Associate, ACLU at 2:59pm
Fifty years ago this week, President Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act in the East Room while surrounded by leaders of the women's rights movement. And on Monday, President Obama celebrated its 50th anniversary with a ceremony in the East Room, and we were lucky enough to be invited.
Today is the 50th anniversary of the Equal Pay Act. On June 10, 1963, Congress enacted the first law to require employers to pay women the same salaries that they pay men. When the law was enacted, I was not quite one month old.
My mother fought for passage of the EPA. She brought me, her newborn baby, to a march on Washington to demand equal pay for women. My childhood was permeated with debates about "Women's Lib." Although she, like my father, was a university professor, prior to passage of the EPA, Columbia University could pay her less than it paid my dad, simply because she was a woman. Passage of the Equal Pay Act was the first major victory of the "second wave" women's movement.
By Tyler Ray, ACLU Washington Legislative Office & Deborah J. Vagins, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 12:38pm
This June 10th, the ACLU will join organizations and individuals across the country to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Equal Pay Act of 1963, a landmark law that required equal pay for equal work for women for the first time. If you don't mind us tooting our own horn for a minute, the ACLU played an instrumental role in the passage of the Equal Pay Act 50 years ago and in expanding women's rights since our founding in 1920.
By Meghan Groob, Media Relations Associate, ACLU at 4:55pm
Imagine looking at your bank statement and seeing $11,000 more than you expected. If you're anything like me, you would immediately start planning how to spend your newfound riches. Should I be responsible and pay off my debt? Or should I finally take that dream vacation to Paris?
This situation isn't hypothetical. Fifty years after President Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act into law, women, on average, still make just 77 cents for every dollar a man makes. That adds up to nearly $11,000 in lost wages every year.
While we’re all celebrating the 40th anniversary of the passage of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, and oh, we are, let’s also take a moment to celebrate the 20th anniversary of another excellent law passed in 1992: The Women in Apprenticeship and Nontraditional Occupations Act.
Yesterday, on a procedural vote, the U.S. Senate failed to reach the 60 votes needed for the Paycheck Fairness Act, a bill intended to update the Equal Pay Act of 1963, to move forward. Unfortunately, the 52-47 vote means more delay for an already long overdue measure to ensure that women receive equal pay for equal work. In 1963, the year that Congress passed the Equal Pay Act, women earned 59 cents to their male counterparts’ dollar. Although we will celebrate the 49th anniversary of the Equal Pay Act on June 10, the disparity continues: today, women, on average, earn only 77 cents for every dollar their male counterparts take home, and for women of color, the disparity is even greater.
Last week, Terri Kelly testified before the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee about pay discrimination. In her nine year career as a pharmaceutical sales rep, Kelly was extremely successful—one of the best-performing reps in the nation. But despite all her hard work, she knew that she was being paid far less than another employee hired around the same time and in the same position: her husband. Because her employer had a policy in place prohibiting employees from either asking about or sharing information about their wages, Kelly was only able to find out that she was being discriminated against because she happened to be married to her coworker.
