Changes in the US Gender Gap in Wages in the 1960s

2021 ◽  
Vol 111 ◽  
pp. 143-148
Author(s):  
Martha J. Bailey ◽  
Thomas Helgerman ◽  
Bryan A. Stuart
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Gender Gap ◽  
Labor Standards ◽  
Equal Pay ◽  
The Us ◽  
Fair Labor Standards Act ◽  
Women's Wages ◽  
The Mean ◽  
Equal Pay Act ◽  
The 1960S

The 1960s witnessed landmark legislation that aimed to increase women's wages, including the Equal Pay Act of 1963, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, and the 1966 amendments to the Fair Labor Standards Act. Although the gender gap in pay changed little at the mean/median during the decade, our distributional analysis shows that women's wages converged sharply on men's below but diverged above the median. However, the bulk of women's relative pay gains are not explained by changes in observed attributes. Our findings suggest an important role for legislation in narrowing the gender gap in the 1960s.

The Equal Pay Act: The First 30 Years

1997 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 335-344 ◽  
Author(s):  
Suzanne M. Crampton ◽  
John W. Hodge ◽  
Jitendra M. Mishra
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Wage Differentials ◽  
Equal Pay ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Civil Rights Act ◽  
Pay Disparity ◽  
Women's Wages ◽  
Equal Work ◽  
Equal Pay Act

Historically, women have been paid less than men. This pay disparity between men and women exists even when women hold similar jobs and are comparable to men with regard to seniority and experience. The goal of the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was to change this situation. The Equal Pay Act states that men and women should receive the same pay for equal work. Three decades have passed but women's wages remain less than wages for men in equal positions. The focus of this paper is a discussion of the Equal Pay Act on wage differentials between men and women. Strategies will be presented that organizations can follow to minimize compensation disparities.

Outside the Law: Agricultural and Domestic Workers Under the Fair Labor Standards Act

1995 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 416-440 ◽  
Author(s):  
Phyllis Palmer
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Minimum Wage ◽  
Domestic Workers ◽  
Labor Standards ◽  
Gender Inequalities ◽  
Fair Labor Standards Act ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Fair Labor

In 1966, at the end of almost two decades of civil rights agitation, men and women of color redressed one significant historical injustice—the legislative exemption of tens of thousands of farmworkers from the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), which guaranteed a minimum wage and maximum hours of work for covered workers. In 1974, after almost a decade of feminist agitation, domestic workers convinced the Congress that even private household service fell within the act's minimum-wage coverage of workers engaged in interstate commerce. The two occupations in which most African Americans and a large number of other nonwhite Americans worked in 1938, and in which significant numbers remained in the 1960s and 1970s, joined the roster of jobs covered by this fundamental legislation. Coverage of the country's least powerful workers and its least valued jobs finally overturned central racial and gender inequalities encoded in the nation's basic labor standards law and awarded workers and jobs long-sought recognition and respect.

scholarly journals Sex Discrimination, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Equal Pay, and Title IX as Applied to the Women’s National Soccer Team

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 55
Author(s):  
Richard J. Hunter, Jr. ◽  
Hector R. Lozada ◽  
Gary H. Kritz
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Title Ix ◽  
Sex Discrimination ◽  
The United States ◽  
Equal Pay ◽  
Civil Rights Act ◽  
Course Of Action ◽  
The Us ◽  
Soccer Team ◽  
Equal Pay Act

This article presents the issues of sex discrimination, working conditions, and equal pay raised in the legal dispute between the United States Soccer Federation and the Women's National Soccer Team. The authors study the application of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Equal Pay Act of 1963, and the implications of applying Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 to the U.S. Soccer Federation. The authors conclude by offering some observations and suggestions on the practical course of action that the US Women’s Soccer Team may consider in attempting to solve its dispute with the Federation.

Transformations: The New Deal through the 1950s

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy Woloch
Keyword(s):  
Women Workers ◽  
New Deal ◽  
Federal Court ◽  
Labor Standards ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
Single Sex ◽  
Fair Labor Standards Act ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The New Deal

This chapter traces the changes in federal and state protective policies from the New Deal through the 1950s. In contrast to the setbacks of the 1920s, the New Deal revived the prospects of protective laws and of their proponents. The victory of the minimum wage for women workers in federal court in 1937 and the passage in 1938 of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), which extended labor standards to men, represented a peak of protectionist achievement. This achievement rested firmly on the precedent of single-sex labor laws for which social feminists—led by the NCL—had long campaigned. However, “equal rights” gained momentum in the postwar years, 1945–60. By the start of the 1960s, single-sex protective laws had resumed their role as a focus of contention in the women's movement.

Employer “Business” and “Job” Defenses in Civil Rights Actions

1994 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 573-586
Author(s):  
Paul S. Greenlaw ◽  
John P. Kohl
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Prima Facie ◽  
Employee Relations ◽  
Equal Pay ◽  
Prima Facie Case ◽  
Civil Rights Act ◽  
Legitimate Business ◽  
Discrimination In Employment ◽  
Equal Pay Act ◽  
Merit System

In civil rights actions, employee-plaintiffs alleging discrimination must attempt to prove a prima facie case;1 and if accomplished the employer-defendant must attempt to rebut such cases with some type of defense. These defenses may be very narrow and specific in scope such as the seniority or merit system defenses explicitly provided for under the 1963 Equal Pay Act (EPA). On the other hand, broader “business” and or “job” defenses (and the wording and meaning varies from situation to situation) have been both devised by the courts as standards of behavior for employers, and stipulated for employers by legislation. This article will analyze four important of these employer defenses: (1) the legitimate business reason and its antecedents in EPA litigation; (2) the Bona Fide Occupational Qualification (BFOQ) “reasonably necessary” defense provided in both the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and in the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967; (3) the business necessity and job related standards promulgated in Griggs v. Duke Power, 401 U.S. 424 (1971), as eventually codified by the Civil Rights Act of 1991; and (4) the job relatedness/business necessity/reasonable accommodation defense of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA). All of the above defenses pose current challenges to employers except probably the BFOQ, so that their examination should be of value to all those involved in employee relations law.

scholarly journals British Black Power: The anti-imperialism of political blackness and the problem of nativist socialism

2019 ◽  
Vol 67 (5) ◽  
pp. 945-967 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Narayan
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Black Power ◽  
British History ◽  
Black Power Movement ◽  
Black Activism ◽  
The Us ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S

The history of the US Black Power movement and its constituent groups such as the Black Panther Party has recently gone through a process of historical reappraisal, which challenges the characterization of Black Power as the violent, misogynist and negative counterpart to the Civil Rights movement. Indeed, scholars have furthered interest in the global aspects of the movement, highlighting how Black Power was adopted in contexts as diverse as India, Israel and Polynesia. This article highlights that Britain also possessed its own distinctive form of Black Power movement, which whilst inspired and informed by its US counterpart, was also rooted in anti-colonial politics, New Commonwealth immigration and the onset of decolonization. Existing sociological narratives usually locate the prominence and visibility of British Black Power and its activism, which lasted through the 1960s to the early 1970s, within the broad history of UK race relations and the movement from anti-racism to multiculturalism. However, this characterization neglects how such Black activism conjoined explanations of domestic racism with issues of imperialism and global inequality. Through recovering this history, the article seeks to bring to the fore a forgotten part of British history and also examines how the history of British Black Power offers valuable lessons about how the politics of anti-racism and anti-imperialism should be united in the 21st century.

A Class by Herself

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy Woloch
Keyword(s):  
Women Workers ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Labor Law ◽  
Labor Standards ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
Progressive Reform ◽  
Single Sex ◽  
Fair Labor Standards Act ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The Impact

This book explores the historical role and influence of protective legislation for American women workers, both as a step toward modern labor standards and as a barrier to equal rights. Spanning the twentieth century, the book tracks the rise and fall of women-only state protective laws—such as maximum hour laws, minimum wage laws, and night work laws—from their roots in progressive reform through the passage of New Deal labor law to the feminist attack on single-sex protective laws in the 1960s and 1970s. The book considers the network of institutions that promoted women-only protective laws, such as the National Consumers' League and the federal Women's Bureau; the global context in which the laws arose; the challenges that proponents faced; the rationales they espoused; the opposition that evolved; the impact of protective laws in ever-changing circumstances; and their dismantling in the wake of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Above all, the book examines the constitutional conversation that the laws provoked—the debates that arose in the courts and in the women's movement. Protective laws set precedents that led to the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 and to current labor law; they also sustained a tradition of gendered law that abridged citizenship and impeded equality for much of the century. Drawing on decades of scholarship, institutional and legal records, and personal accounts, the book sets forth a new narrative about the tensions inherent in women-only protective labor laws and their consequences.

Understanding Affirmative Action: From the Practitioner's Perspective

1995 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 139-147 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Michael Pace ◽  
Zachary Smith
Keyword(s):  
Affirmative Action ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
Public Administrators ◽  
Federal Law ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
Equal Pay ◽  
Legal Concept ◽  
Equal Pay Act ◽  
Municipal Level

Affirmative action was originally meant to remove by law, as required by the Equal Pay Act and the 1964 Civil Rights Act, “artificial barriers” that often prevented women and minority groups from entering the workforce. By the late 1960's and early 1970's affirmative action had been altered to become the governmental attempt to provide compensatory opportunities for groups who experience discrimination when seeking employment. More recently the legal essence of affirmative action refers to specific guidelines and rules to recruit, hire, and promote disadvantaged groups for the purpose of eliminating the existing effects of past discriminatory practices. Despite a plethora of U.S. Supreme Court decisions, affirmative action has yet to be clearly defined as a cohesive public policy. The Court's failure to define affirmative action as a coherent constitutional and legal concept has led to widespread misinterpretation of affirmative action goals among public administrators. This notion is substantiated by examining the results of a survey of local government officials at the county and municipal level which measures their understanding and perception of federal law pertaining to affirmative action's meaning and purpose.

scholarly journals The Opt-In Revolution? Contraception and the Gender Gap in Wages

2012 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 225-254 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martha J Bailey ◽  
Brad Hershbein ◽  
Amalia R Miller
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle ◽  
Gender Gap ◽  
Career Paths ◽  
Hourly Wage ◽  
Capital Investments ◽  
The Us ◽  
Human Capital Investments ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S

Decades of research on the US gender gap in wages describes its correlates, but little is known about why women changed their career paths in the 1960s and 1970s. This paper explores the role of “the Pill” in altering women's human capital investments and its ultimate implications for life-cycle wages. Using state-by-birth-cohort variation in legal access, we show that younger access to the Pill conferred an 8 percent hourly wage premium by age 50. Our estimates imply that the Pill can account for 10 percent of the convergence of the gender gap in the 1980s and 30 percent in the 1990s. (JEL J13, J16, J31, J71, J24)

The Limits of Liberal Internationalism

2019 ◽  
pp. 222-240
Author(s):  
Hannah Higgin
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Mutual Understanding ◽  
Color Line ◽  
Exchange Programs ◽  
Liberal Internationalism ◽  
The Us ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
At Home ◽  
Western Ideals

This chapter addresses how Fulbright’s views on race complicated American exchange programs with African nations in the 1960s. At the height of the civil rights movement, Presidents Kennedy and Johnson sought to improve relations with newly decolonized African nations, and Fulbright’s influence over exchange programs complicated that pursuit. Though Fulbright believed that boosting mutual understanding through exchange was the world’s best hope for creating and maintaining peace, he did not believe that all people—not least Africans—would be able to grasp the liberal, Western ideals he wished to spread. Though he was known as a racial moderate, his outlook on policy was hemmed in by the color line at home and abroad, a fact that constrained the US government’s African exchange programming. He preferred that the focus of exchange programs remain on Europe.

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