Equal Pay Act of 1963

The Equal Pay Act of 1963 (EPA), signed by President John F. Kennedy, came into effect on June 11, 1964. It was designed to reduce the pay differential between men and women for substantially equal work within the same organization. The EPA is part of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, as amended. This act, administered and enforced by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, prohibits all employers from wage discrimination between men and women in the same establishment who are performing under similar working conditions. If there is a pay differential, the employer must be able to demonstrate that it is based on seniority, a well-defined merit system, a system that measures the quantity or quality of productive output, or some factor other than sex. Employees filing claims under the EPA are not required to show that their employer intended to engage in sex-based discrimination. Although the concept of comparable worth was considered in the formulation of this act, it was rejected in favor of the definition of equal work. Equal work was understood to indicate substantially equal, but not necessarily identical, job tasks, effort, and responsibilities.

Congressional hearings in the spring of 1963 reflected the broad national debate that preceded and followed the passage of the EPA. The statement prepared for Congress by the National Retail Merchant Association (NRMA) exemplified the concerns of many businesses regarding the proposed act. While the NRMA asserted their enthusiastic support for the principle of equal pay for equal work, the bulk of their statement argued that federal legislation was unnecessary, burdensome, confusing, and unenforceable. Furthermore, they pointed out, higher rates of absenteeism for women increased the employers' cost of employing women. Additional costs included the [Page 773]necessity of constructing additional seats, lunchrooms, and bathrooms for women and the anticipated provision of longer meal and rest periods for women.

Vociferous contrasting views were presented to Congress by the Women's Department of the United Auto Workers' Union. In support of the EPA, they argued that unequal pay was immoral in depriving women of earned payment, unjust in penalizing the lowest-paid workers, inefficient in causing resentment among employees, uneconomic in incentivizing the inefficient use of workers, and contrary to the interest of the community in penalizing fair-minded employers while providing a cost bonus to employers who discriminated against women.

Since the passage of the EPA, sex-segregated job listings have disappeared, and overt sex discrimination in workplace compensation has diminished. However, the wage gap between men and women continues. In 1963, women earned 59% of the wages earned by men; in 2002, women earned 76% of men's wages. Although this oft-cited statistical indicator includes a measure of the wages of dramatically unequal positions as well as those with substantively equal tasks, it is widely acknowledged that the goal of equal pay for equal work articulated by the Equal Pay Act of 1963 has not yet been fully achieved.