Equal Pay Act of 1963

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Melissa Fugiero is a contributor to SAGE Publications’ Encyclopedia of Governance (2007), and a version of her article was used for her Britannica entry on this topic.

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Equal Pay Act of 1963 (EPA), landmark U.S. legislation mandating equal pay for equal work, in a measure to end gender-based disparity. The National War Labor Board first advocated equal pay for equal work in 1942, and an equal pay act was proposed in 1945. Eighteen years later, on June 10, 1963, President John F. Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act into law. It was enacted as an amendment to the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which regulates minimum wages, overtime, and child labour.

Among the reasons given to justify unequal pay were these: working women had a higher turnover rate because of family obligations; some state laws prohibited women from working at night; and other laws limited the actual number of hours women could work and the amount of weight women could lift. The laws reflected the historical bias in the system of compensation in the United States during that period; in the 1950s two-thirds of families had a breadwinning husband and a stay-at-home wife. A woman’s income was not considered vital to the survival of the household.

The EPA requires, as a general rule, that men and women who work in jobs that are substantively equal in terms of skill, effort, responsibility, and working conditions shall receive the same pay. The original bill that was proposed required equal pay for “comparable work.” However, this stipulation was changed before the passage of the bill to “equal work.” The EPA permits differences in wages based on seniority, merit, quality, or quantity of production, or other differentials not based on gender. In EPA cases, plaintiffs have the burden of proof to show that women were paid less than men and that the work involved was “substantively equal.” From 1963 until the passage of the Educational Amendments in 1972, those employed in executive, administrative, or professional capacities were excluded from the protection of the EPA because of its incorporation with the Fair Labor Standards Act, which included those exemptions. As a result of the Reorganization Act of 1977, the enforcement of the EPA shifted to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 1979, where it remains.