Parable of the Sadhu

Forty years after the Equal Pay Act of 1963 (EPA), full time working women still earn an average of 80 percent for each dollar earned by men. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 1999 women earned only 72 cents for every dollar than men earned. This is approximately a 13 cent improvement from the 1963 wage gap figure of 59 cents on the dollar (EEOC website). The Equal Pay Act, signed by President Kennedy, prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in the payment of wages or benefits, where men and women perform work of similar skill, effort, and responsibility for the same employer under similar working conditions. Employers may not reduce wages of either sex to equalize pay between men and women. A violation of the EPA may occur where a different wage was or is paid to a person who worked in the same job before or after an employee of the opposite sex. Jobs are not required to be identical, but they must be equal. It is job content, not job titles, that determines whether jobs are equal.

The issue of equal work for equal pay has a long legislative and judicial history and yet remains one of the social problems that has shown staying power. According to the data from the National Bureau Labor Statistics federal, state, and private sector efforts have fallen short of their aims when trying to equal the playing field, at least in regards to pay equity for women. Discrimination against women in the workplace has been addressed in successive legislation, executive orders and court decisions dating back to 1961. President Kennedy issued Executive Order 10925, which created the President's Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity and prohibited discrimination on the basis of gender, race, creed, color, or national origin by federal contractors (EEOC website). In 1965, President Johnson through Executive Order 11375 expanded President Kennedy's order. Equal pay legislation was first introduced through the Equal Pay Act of 1963 as an amendment to the Fair Labor Standards Act. This law requires equal pay for work involving equal skill, effort, responsibility, and working conditions. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 made all discrimination illegal, and Title VII specifically forbids discrimination in employment practices based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. In 1991, the Civil Rights Acts was amended to strengthen protections. Title VI, known as the Equal Pay Act was amended to prohibit discrimination on the basis of gender, race, color, or national origin in any program or activity that receives federal government financial assistance, loans, tax breaks or grants and contracts from government. In addition to federal legislation most states have equal pay laws.

Until the early 1960's, newspapers published separate job listings for men and women. Jobs were categorized according to sex, with the higher level jobs listed under the help wanted male section. In some cases an identical ad ran under male and female listings but with separate pay scales. It wasn't until the Equal Pay Act was passed on June 10, 1963, that it became illegal to pay women lower wages for the same job strictly on the basis of their sex. This Act was President Kennedy's call on Americans to fulfill the nation's promise of equal rights and equal opportunities (EEOC website). Differences in seniority, merit, the quality or quantity of work, or other considerations might merit different pay, but gender could no longer be viewed as a drawback. Over the next few decades, between June 1964 and January 1971, as the EPA gradually expanded, back wages totaling more than $26 million were paid to

71, 000 women (Infante, 2001). In today's standards these figures seem very dismal, especially when today women are receiving more than $6.4 million in settlement cases.

Even today wage discrimination remains a serious problem. Wage discrimination is deeply rooted in our legal system and our cultural history. And today's compensation systems still reflect this bias. It was generally accepted that men deserved to earn more money than women, even if their work was identical. Employers considered men to be the primary breadwinners and married women as being the workforce to earn "pin money". The "family wages" were built around the concept of a wage earning male and a "dependent" female spouse (Pay-equity website). However, in more recent decades, the dynamics of the family has changed. In many homes the head of household and sole breadwinner is a woman. The mindset of the 1960's does not seem to be very far from the mindset of the 1990's. According to the National Bureau of Labor Statistics, women enter college in greater numbers than men, and graduate in equal numbers. Yet, women are still victims of our workplace society Ð'- women are not in the workplace in equal numbers to men, they do not earn the same as men and they have not risen to the top in equal numbers. Women are often encouraged into the more traditional female occupations, such as a nurse, teacher, clerical worker, or retail sales clerk. There are very few women judges in our courtroom, partners in law firms, executives in the boardroom or running our large companies (Albrechsten, 2004). One main reason for this occurrence is not discrimination against individual women but rather discrimination against women's occupations. More than 55 percent of employed women work in traditional "women's jobs" Ð'- librarians, clerical workers, nurses, teachers, and child care workers (Barko, 2000). An explanation for this philosophy or mindset is that many people think and believe what men do is more important and more valuable than what women do, and that women don't work as hard as men. This mindset has perpetuated sex based occupational segregation. Requiring equal pay for workers in equivalent jobs, even when the work performed is different is the surest way of eliminating the enduring biases against jobs held predominantly by women.

Two landmark court cases served to strengthen and further define the Equal Pay Act Ð'- Schultz v. Wheaton Class Co. (1970), which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled that jobs need to be substantially equal but not identical to fall under the protection of the Equal Pay Act. An employer cannot change the job titles of women workers in order to pay them less than men. In Corning Glass Workers v. Brennan (1974), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that employees cannot justify paying women lower wages because that is what they traditionally receive under the going market rate. A wage differential occurring simply because men would not work at the low rate paid to women was unacceptable. The blatant discrimination apparent in these court cases seems archaic today, as does the practice of sex segregated job listings.