Pros And Cons Of Equal Pay

On June 10, 1963 Congress passed the Equal Pay Act this law made it illegal to pay women lower wage rates for the same job strictly based on their sex. Before that separate job listings for men and women advertised in newspapers with different pay scales for the same jobs with the highest-level jobs advertising for men only. Subsequently two important court cases, Schultz vs. Wheaton Glass (1970) which ruled jobs only need to be substantially equal and not identical to be protected under the Equal Pay Act and Corning Glass Works vs. Brennan (1974) that determined women could not be paid less simply because they would work at a lower pay rate than men helped to strengthen and further define the Equal Pay Act (Rowen). Although the Equal Pay

However, according to an October 2016 report by the National Partnership for Women and Families on average women in the United States are paid 80 cents for every dollar paid to men amounting to an annual gender wage gap of $10,470. These wage gaps amount to loss wages for women and with many families now being headed by women these wage gaps make it difficult for families to save for the future or pay for basic necessities. Unfortunately, this wage gap between women and men is present regardless of industry, occupation or education and is even larger for women of color or can vary from different cities or states. For example, Wyoming has the largest pay gap where women are paid 64 cents for every dollar paid to men compared to New York and Delaware. In these two states the wage gap is slighter smaller where women are paid on average 89 cents for every dollar paid to

Across the largest racial and ethnic groups in the United States, Asian/Pacific Islander women have the highest median annual earnings at $46,000, followed by white women at $40,000. Native American and Hispanic women have the lowest earnings at $31,000 and $28,000, respectively (IWPR, 2015). While women with a bachelor’s degree earn, on average, more than twice the amount that women with less than a high school diploma earn, women who work full-time earn less than men at the same educational level and in some instances, earn the same or less than men with lower educational qualifications. Certainly, this data indicates that women need more educational qualifications than men do to secure jobs that pay well. This despite that for the first time in American history, the percentage of women who had a bachelor’s degree or higher (33 percent) was statistically higher than the percentage of men (32 percent) with this level of education (Census Bureau,