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......
Join Now or Login to view the rest of this paper.
Approximate Word Count: 5503
Approximate Pages: 22 (260 words per double-spaced page) |